Redstate

I do not believe we can still trust the current administration.  They seem to have left the conservative philosophy at the door the day they moved into the White House.  They also seem completely unwilling to admit mistakes or to change directions as new information comes to light.  Miers may turn out to be an extremely conservative member of the court, but that is not what was promised.  What was promised was a legal mind in the Mold of Scalia who would not only rule conservatively with the Constitution, but also be able to craft opinions that could persuade the rational public to our side.  I do not see this in Miers and if her opinions are not well crafted, she will be the laughing stock of the court and a constant source of fuel for the other side.

Can we still trust them?

For now, yes, but if Roberts and Miers vote to uphold Roe v. Wade then never again.    

I'm afraid to answer.

The absense of evidence does not prove your point.  If she turns out to be to the right of Scalia AND a better writer, will you apologize?  Except for teaching at various law schools after law review at Harvard, I fail to see how Miers is not exactly "in the mold of Scalia" (AND Thomas, if you will recall, as fully pledged).  

Scalia also had a distinguished career in government service.  He served first as general counsel, Office of Telecommunications Policy, in the administration of President Richard Nixon.  Then, in 1972, and for the next two years, he served as chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and finally from 1974 to 1977 he served President Gerald Ford as assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department (sound familiar).  It was in this position, as legal adviser for the executive branch, that Scalia began to articulate his deep respect for the presidency as an institution -- a respect that would later mark his judicial writings -- do you KNOW that Miers writings are not the same?

From 1981 to 1982 he served as chairman of the American Bar Association's section on administrative law and was chairman of the Conference of Section Chairs -- a recognition by his peers of his leadership abilities -- see Miers Dallas and ABA positions.

Now, you may point to Scalia's legal opinions on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  Keep in mind that he served on this court for only four years -- Roberts served on this court less than 2 -- do you really think it would have been wise (if Miers is indeed "in the mold of Scalia") to likewise put her on the federal bench just to PROVE that to the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee?!

That's why my "Yes" was qualified - this is the last straw, so I can understand the feeling of those who already grasped their last straw  ; )

  Parts of this post read like "When in the course of human events...", all brought about by the nomination of one Harriet Miers, the bi-pedal equivalent of the Stamp Act, whose nomination has given rise to the rhetoric of "No nomination without consultation!" and "Give me Luttig, or give me death!".

  Would you have even thought of writing this if Bush had nominated Luttig, Brown or someone more palatable? Would the central issue have been at all different?

     

I would apologize.  But I am still saying her resume does not distinguish her from thousands of other lawyers except for her being the President's friend.  With court appointments for life, I want something other than Bush's friend being the prime requisite qualification for the SCOTUS.

I know I just answered your question and then went right into defend-mode, but I do appreciate the thoughts, especially about the SCOTUS being the "final authority" -- the President needs to take a more Constitutional role in declaring violations as well -- I have to admit, though, I am one who was a little disappointed to hear Roberts say Marbury v. Madison was settled law, but as you said, no one is perfect  ; )

who haven't seen this, here's link to the 1996 First Things symposium on "The Judicial Usurpation of Politics":

http://www.firstthings.com/menus/ft9611.html.  It's worth a read.

Isn't this sort of rule by judges and technocrats a necessary consequence of the notion of America as a "Proposition Nation?"  If we are but propositions, those propositions must be guarded by hierarchs, just like in any other theocracy.  The SCOTUS fills the role rather nicely.  

Given that I spent the last year telling my liberal friends that the election was an easy choice because we could trust Bush as a leader, I have a hard time now saying that I can't trust that he still means the hard work it took to put JRB, Priscilla Owen, and William Pryor on the bench . . .

Really, I do.  If we had 51 solid conservative Republicans in the Senate, I'd probably not be so understanding of the President's nomination either.

Nonetheless, what's wrong with a little rhetorical flourish every now and then?

All of those previously stellar appointments don't give you any faith that Bush is merely offering up a trojan horse?

that I thought seriously about this problem long before Harriet Miers' name ever crossed the wires. Here, for example, I addressed it, 18 months ago. Here, about a year ago.

Though this nomination has raised some serious questions about the willingness of this administration to take it to the democrats "head-on" over conservative issues, I do not doubt the President's ability to lead our country.

Moreso, I feel that, with all the issues facing a country separated by political divides, he would rather find someone conservative but not to the extreme to create problems and issues that could further stall the progress of his agenda.

A fight now over a SCOTUS would add more "fuel to the fire" for democrats to scorn and ridcule and further divide our country. I really think that, with this pick, the President is trying to bring us all back together and put aside our differences and focus on the agenda of getting our nation back on course.

Yes, we won the election and rule the House and Senate, but it hasn't worked in our favor because of partisan politics. By nominating Miers, the President has caused the democrats to put aside those differences and the politicqal rhetoric has been lowered since then.

I do not doubt that he would not have nominated Miers if he didn't believe in her and in the same principles we know he wants in an Associate Justice.

keep blaming the Democrats when we have solid majorities in both houses of the legislature and a Republican president.  So stop.  The Democrats are weaker now than at any time since before the Great Depression, yet Republicans blame them for the inability of our supposedly right-of-Attila President to name a decent nominee.  We can't blame the Dems for everything, folks.

I think it is fair to say, is central landmark in the Conservative revolt against the despotism of the judiciary, and the first time some on the Right began to confront the dilemma I assayed here. The split it provoked was dramatic, to say the least.

Yes, I agree that the Propositional Nation theory opens us to all manner of depredations. It imperils American patriotism, as I wrote here.

And, would that include the likes of Chaffee and Snowe?

(below)

like Kennedy, Souter, and O'Connor, Republican appointees all, let us down?  How many times must Lucy snatch the football away?

This is the last straw for me too (although did you know that Kennedy voted to overturn Roe v. Wade the last time that issue came up?).  The BIG difference between those 3 and Miers is that the President KNOWS her personally.

There is a theory that has been put forward at DailyKos that a Republican government will never take effective steps to strike down Roe vs Wade (or at least, not for a long long time) because it is so effective at galvanising their base.  The idea is that many pro-life Republicans are single-issue voters, or are primarily motivated by this single issue.  If Roe vs Wade was overturned, these people could be persuaded to vote for Democrats based on other issues, or else they might just not care enough to vote at all.  

Has this idea been suggested in conservative circles at all?  Do you think it has any credibility?

And I am sure some pro-choice Republicans out there want exactly that - I do not think GWB is one of them.

  Thanks for the links. I agreed in spirit with the post but thought it had been motivated simply by Miers'nomination. I stand corrected.

Here are the only U.S. Senators I trust:

Allard (R-CO)

Bond (R-MO)

Coburn (R-OK)

Cochran (R-MS)

Cornyn (R-TX)

Inhofe (R-OK)

Roberts (R-KS)

Sessions (R-AL)

Stevens (R-AK)

here, which you do not name: namely the conflation of "nation" with "state". Thus people misidentify the nation itself with its government and judge the whole by whatever government currently sits in power and by its policies. Even under a wholly autocratic regime where some potentate opines "l'état c'est moi" this is an error, albeit a more understandable one. But under a form of government such as ours where governments come and go this is an exceptionable error. One's patriotism should be based on love of country not on love of governmment. One should be able to regard the current holders of office as the choicest collection of fools, oafs, and lunatics ever to tread the marbled halls of power without suffering any diminution in one's love for country, for in the end politics is an epiphenomenon, albeit a necessary and inevitable one, but not ever something primary and fundamental.

Is voting to overturn Roe your only criterion for evaluating a judge?

I've heard the arguement before that it would be a major loser for Republicans, not so much because of a loss of fundraising, but becuase if we actually had to defend banning abortion in elections around the country (once Roe was no longer in effect), we would be annihilated.

I am pro-life, but unfortunately I think we probably would lose big on state and national levels in this situation. But at least the people would have decided, not our judicial overlords.

...I don't think you can really blame the Dems for the polarization in the country. They haven't that kind of power right now. Both parties are at fault, and it's likely due to the overpromotion of extremist issues on both sides, which just tends to push those in the center (the majority of the two parties) to one side or the other. (Or, it can also result in a splintered party.)

But if membership in the nation is merely acceptance of its ideology, of which the state is perforce the guardian and interpreter, then the distinction between state and nation collapses.  The nation becomes that group of people called into existence by the state, rather than a pre-existing community that, as the liberals would have it, made itself a government, or a people bound to a particular place and culture who just happen to have a government.  

it's a bad pick, even if she turns out to be Bork in hack's clothing.  For two (among many) reasons: it looks like cronyism, and it rewards stealth conservative candidates while more importantly penalizing outspoken conservative candidates.

Not seeing the cronyism charge reflects a tin ear, like the immigration tin ear.  Or that beloved W. stubbornness (stubbornity?), like Iraq.

Picking a "loyal voter" candidate rather than a "principled voter" candidate reflects ignorance of the correct role of the Supreme Court and/or cynicism regarding that role, and/or ignorance/naivete of the motivations of a "loyal" appointee to a lifetime position.  

I'm leaning towards the ignorance explanation, because he also didn't realize that her lack of appropriate qualification is glaring and adds to the credibility of the cronyism charge.

And then there's Rush's "acting from weakness instead of strength" argument.

everyone else pays cash.

To say that I trust the President would force me to define what I constitute as trust, and would probably cause me to have to create several strata of trust.  First, my trust in the president doesn't come anywhere near the level of trust that a child has for his mother, as she cares for him and loves him.  My trust for Bush is far more akin to the trust I have for any politician, no matter how principled they may be.  Rather, trust has very little with how I see the President.  I want a president who will move the country in the direction that I want it to go, socially.  While I do care a bit as to the methods by which he chooses to go that route, the act of using a stealth nominee is an acceptable practice from my point of view.

Let me clarify my POVs here.  One, if Miers is anything beyong what Bush has promised, I'm going to be royally hacked off.  Its not that I "trust" the president(WMDs, NCLB, Iraq etc have weakened anything that I could possibly call trust, but neither do I think the President's motives were wrong on these items, they just didn't pan out well, and that counts for quite a bit) its just that I like what I have seen so far in Miers.

The second issue that I find absolutely without merit is the issue of "qualified"  If Miers isn't qualified then I'm a donut.  This is a woman who has risen far within her profession.  So what if she's not a sitting judge. 40% of all of our SCOTUS judges didn't come from the bench.  She has attained the highest honors within the Texas Bar association, she has overseen a major law firm.  Those are, IMO, great qualifications for the job.

Another idea that I find disturbing is that she doesn't appricate constitutional law, and as such can't be reliable to read it faithfully.  What kind of tripe is that?  Folks like Ginsburg were supposedly well versed in ConLaw and see what we get from that?  Heck, Leon is well versed enough in ConLaw to faithfully interpret it and he's still in Law School (no, Leon you cannot be elevated to the SCOTUS yet, maybe when Stevens checks out we can review you again:D).  You see, the issue re ConLaw has very little to do with expertise or experience and everything to do with one's conlaw philosophy.  And while its true that we don't know conclusively what that philosophy is and we have a right to have that revealed in the confirmation hearings, it is way too premature to be secondguessing her judicial philosophy.

Lastly, as an evangelical christian, I am happy that Bush as nominated another evangelical (That could be quickly tempered if she is a Laodocian Christian, tepid and lukewarm, blown about by whatever winds are being blown.)  I hope that the quality of her faith is transparent during the hearings, and I'd love to see the tempest stirred within our culture regarding the idea of the political left trying to apply a new religious litmus test for the SCOTUS.

While that desire is probably nothing more than a pipe dream, and we'll probably see very little of that from the dems (as most aren't quite as out of their minds, as the koskids are), but who knows - maybe they'll surprise us and give us the fight that we're looking for, on an issue that will cost them.

It is the most important though.

Kyle(R-AZ) is a ROCK.  You can count on him.

Then why did he vote to restrict the President's ability to deal with terrorists at Gitmo?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/05/AR200510050
2062.html

Particularly when an overturning of Roe won't make any difference? Choice will continue; individual states will legalize it.

At any rate, I would think the goal would be to confirm a judge will vote based on the Constitution and the law, rather than according to some agenda she shares with you. That's just activism.

and partly a political ploy, but voting against it was just stupid. None of them will lose because of it, but it makes them look really petty.

Overturning Roe v. Wade WOULD NOT BAN ABORTIONS.  It would just leave it up to the states as it was BEFORE Roe.  The federal government would not BAN abortions.  They would just get out of the issue, as they SHOULD.  It should not be a federal issue.  MOST things shouldn't be.

I was operating under the assumption that you thought torture was bad. Nevermind my comment below.

Why is overturning Roe the most important criteria.  There are many pro-choice R's out there and should not the most important criteria be qualifications and a total respect for the Constitution.

the question revolving around Mr. Cella's post is larger than Court picks.  Large enough in fact for me to yearn for term limits,how else to get wacks like Don Young out of office,to shut down weasels like Jack Abramhoff,to turn K street into a shopping mall or public park,to make Washington D C a place you read about not gravitate to, to make languid and smug congressional staffers fear for their jobs,if not their lives [irony],and ultimately deprive millions of the opportunity to gaze adoringly at that Principality of Potholes on the Potomac.  Let them take up Wiccan instead.

My point was that Republicans running for office would then be forced to put their money where there mouth is and actually attempt to enact policies banning abortion.

Or I guess in some cases acknowledge that they fully support conituation of legal abortion, and they would lose their pro-life voters.

At any rate, I think that in many states (including many red states) pro-life Republicans would lose big if Roe was overturned and candidates positions on abortion actually meant something.

<Republicans running for office would then be forced to put their money where there mouth is and actually attempt to enact policies banning abortion>

Those running for any FEDERAL office would ignore the issue because it would be moot at that level.  It would be up to the state legislators to create or change any laws or the citizens through referendum.

It should be off the radar screen at the federal level.

I happen to be old enough to remember the situation BEFORE Roe v. Wade.  Planned Parenthood had offices in states that DID NOT allow legal abortions and they facilitated transportation and services TO states, like California, that DID have legalized abortions.  It was ugly then, it is ugly now, and THAT will not change.

Trust but verify.  Still applies and always will.

If you put faith in politicians, you are always going to be disappointed.  Cold realism is the only thing that will keep you sane if you are involved in politics.  The reality today is really simple:  Anything that weakens George Bush strengthens Michael Moore. W made a mistake with this nomination, but that horse has escaped the barn. A defeat now only weakens Bush more. It was bad enough seeing Moore in Jimmy Carter's box at the Democrat Convention.  Do you want to see him in the best seat in the house at the 2009 inaugral?

equals disrespect for the Constitution.  As Thomas said earlier this week, Roe is metonymic for Living Consitution Jurisprudence, which itself entails judicial oligarchy.

Congress has already been legislating abortion restrictions - the partial-birth abortion ban, for example.  Legislators may want to steer clear of this hot-button issue, but they can't use the excuse that federal legislation is not permitted.

Hypothetically, a few more originalist Justices MIGHT declare that federal legislation on abortion is off-limits, but that's a ways off.  And if a judge were to strike down the federal partial-birth abortion ban on the grounds that it should be left up to the states, I'm not sure how much the conservative base would really love that judge.

The point is that most pro-life voters care a lot more about abortion than about some abstract concept of federalism.

In my life, I have learned two hard lessons about trust.

1. Trust no one but God.  Everyone else will betray you.
   
2. If you don't trust people, you will never be able to acomplish your goals in life, or achieve happiness.

Which leads me to the inescapable conclusion:

We must trust some people some of the time, and accept the fact that we will occasionaly be betrayed.

That said, out of these general lessons I draw two lessons for the specific situation of Judical nominies:

1. If we want to accomplish our goal of taking back the Supreme Court, we have no choice but to trust the people we elect as Senators and as President.
   
2. We will (and have, per Souter ect) been betrayed, but we cannot let such betrayals prevent us from ever trusting the people we elect.  Otherwise we will defeat ourselves.

Therefor, I guess I am taking the wait and see aproach of "Chillin", but I sure hope the confimation hearing gets over quickly, before my ulcer starts back up.

The vote was 90 to 9!  Your logic means there are only NINE solid Senators.  So much for getting ANYTHING DONE.  The "nuclear option", then, is OFF THE TABLE.

GEEZ.

that politicians at the federal level wouldn't have to deal with the issue, the republican party would get crushed at the state level.

State officeholders are probably the main pipeline for new officeholders at the Federal level, so republicans would have minimal bench going forward.

Also, I have to believe their would be major blowback against the republican party at the federal level if state republicans were attempting to ban abortion. They'd all be painted with the same brush.

As much as I hate to admit it, overturning Roe would be a major loser for republicans. But I'd be willing to take the loss on the prinicple that the abortion issue should be decided by the people, not by judges.

If Reagan really was your hero, you would not use his saying about the EVIL EMPIRE against GWB, ignoring Reagan's 11th Commandment  ;  )

There are already some restrictions on abortion at the local level which are legal under Roe.  Like you can't get an abortion in the 8th month of pregnancy just for the fun of it.  

The issue after Roe won't be "should we ban all abortions."  It will be "where do we draw the line."  The line has to be drawn somewhere.  Republicans could say, for example, that they oppose abortion after the first trimester.  A recent op-ed in the Chicago Tribune showed that there is a lot of public support for that, and there's a lot of support even for generally banning abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or risk to life of the mother.

I don't think a fight over abortion at the local level will be fatal for Republicans, because it will inevitably result in a compromise that most people can live with.

Can we trust the Republican leadership to give it's base what it wants?

Increasingly, I'd say no.

Read it and weep:

[Miers] Helped Set Up Lecture Series That Brought Leading Feminists to Southern Methodist U.

In the late 1990s, as a member of the advisory board for Southern Methodist University's law school, Ms. Miers pushed for the creation of an endowed lecture series in women's studies. . . [she] also gave money and solicited donations to help get it off the ground.

A feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, delivered the series's first lecture, in 1998. In the following two years, the speakers were Patricia S. Schroeder, the former Democratic congresswoman widely associated with women's causes, and Susan Faludi, the author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991). Ann W. Richards, the Democrat whom George W. Bush unseated as governor of Texas in 1994, delivered the lecture in 2003.

This is the late '90s, not twenty years ago.

We're being had.

I do not consider ANY means that prevents a catastrophic harm (i.e. another 9/11) as necessarily "bad", do you?

...translate that, and describe how Roe is against the Constitution?

I think ever since Frist refused to use the nuclear option, it has been off the table and the Dems / pro-choice RINOs know it.  

Well that didn't take long. Coulter comes out swinging, and throws some haymakers.

http://www.anncoulter.org/cgi-local/welcome.cgi

A few key quotes:

"If the president meant Harriet Miers seriously, I have to assume Bush wants to go back to Crawford and let Dick Cheney run the country."

"First, Bush has no right to say "Trust me." He was elected to represent the American people, not to be dictator for eight years."

"While Bush was still boozing it up in the early '80s, Ed Meese, Antonin Scalia, Robert Bork and all the founders of the Federalist Society began creating a farm team of massive legal talent on the right."

Yikes.

John Roberts was involved in free expression rights for the "other side" too?  Does that mean he is a closet homosexual, or could it mean that he respects the 1st Amendment?  Or, were you upset about that too?!

My con law professor, Douglas Kmiec, sets up similar lecture series (while I don't know about including feminists, specifically, there were lots of opposing even - shocking, I know - LIBERAL viewpoints).  That being said, there's not a single legal scholar I would personally trust more on the Supreme Court himself.

. . .suspicion that dKos is populated largely by Bizarro Ann Coulters--the "dictator" and "boozing" cracks fit too smoothly into the ranting here to be a coincidence.

I understand the sentiment, but I certainly hope Ms. Coulter will be at least as forthcoming in her apology.

For example: genocide, establishment of a totalitarian regime, rescission of the Bill of Rights...

Roe is a representation, by substitution, of everything that has gone wrong with Constitutional law over the course of the past 40 years.  Read the opinions which comprise the ruling itself.  The reasoning is tortured, making recourse to inanities such as "emanations of penumbras" in order to justify something that is simply not countenanced under the Constitution as a federally guaranteed right, and that as an evolution of a concept of privacy not grounded in the Constitution.  

If you'd rather not squander an evening or two on a perusal of the opinions, I'll make it very simple:  The Constutution neither was nor is a document of miraculous provenance, so recondite and elevated in its meanings, that its sense was unknown to those who wrote it; it was not a project, but an accomplishment which itself defined the process by which it was to be changed: amendments.  From this it follows that meanings cannot be legitimately discovered in, or predicated of, that document that were either not known, or not consonant with, the understanding of those who wrote it.  

A federal right to butcher one's unborn, partially born, or born children was not part of the understanding, on the part of the framers, of the rights secured under the Constitution; neither was that alleged right secured by the constitutionally specified process of amendment.  It was willed into existence as a product of will - the will to originate new meanings for the Constitution on the part of a judicial oligarchy enamored of its own power to remake law for supposedly changed, modern circumstances.  It is a product of will, not law, because it bypassed the specified process for such Constitutional evolutions; as a product of will, it represents the rule, not of law, but of men, the very antithesis of constitutionally defined republican government.  

Aside from the tried and true liberal tactic of just claiming something is something terrible in order to villify those who support it (such as arbitrarily defining torture to include all interrogation, arbitrarily defining racism as not obeying the Democrats), you have gone one step further, hoping to define the terms of the great debate that the methods Bush is using to combat terrorism include rescinding the Bill of rights, totalitarianism and genocide.

Oh, I know you didn't say that exactly. But you meant it, with a wink and a none too subtle nudge.

from them?

We cannot allow the ends to justify the means.  We must have a standard of what we will and what we won't allow.

I'd like to think that one of the things that makes us great, as Americans is our humanity, or our compassion.  I'm not sure if we surrender that in order to win the war on terror that we don't wind up losing that which we set out to protect.

Anything that weakens George Bush strengthens Michael Moore....A defeat now only weakens Bush more.

That seems logical, but I question it. Bush isn't running again. His concerns are getting congressional support for his agenda and not weakening the party for the 2006 elections.

Suppose Miers were withdrawn or defeated. Would that make Democrats any more likely to oppose Administration efforts than they already are, post-Katrina? If he then nominates a respected legal conservative, would Republicans be more likely to oppose his agenda? (Hint: intended rhetorical questions).

As for the 2006 elections, the demoralization of the base seems to me the real "defeat" that demands the most immediate worry. The best solution to that is for the Miers nomination to disappear, or be disappeared.  

thing is winning. Period. You may be happy coming in second place in this war but count me out of your dystopia.

Are Coulter's comments in any way acceptable?

Should this type of Bush Bashing be tolerated, regardless of who it comes from?

The court could decide that the unborn are entitled to due process. That is, 'no one shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process'.

The court COULD hold that the unborn deserve a fair hearing before a jury of their peers to decide their fate. This would leave the decision up to juries to decide if a woman could get an abortion.

I agree, as I must, that the end cannot justify jusy any means.  But the framing of the debate is too often that anything mean equates to torture.  Worse still, specific techniques are debated publically, which ought to be forbidden in a time of war, for reason of the unfamiliarity of 99.98% of the population with interrogation techniques, as well as the fact that our enemies do not need advance notice of the methods that await them upon capture.

Ask yourself the question I ask myself: Would you rather interrogate a terrorist aggressively, or have him, or his cohorts, blow up your children?  

I'd rather be mean to him than lose my children, thank you.

Should this type of Bush Bashing be tolerated, regardless of who it comes from?

Spare me the trouble of banning you.

The "we'll be as bad as them" argument is just one step from "violence never solved anything".

In this fight, in this fight, it may be the case that we can allow a victorious end to justify means we would otherwise frown on.

This doesn't make the ends justifying the means a policy or principle to be followed. It doesn't even mean that we accept any and all means as acceptable. Obviously, destroying the entire planet and everyone on it would be counterproductive to the survival motivation behind fighting in the first place.

However, not only would something like genocide be unacceptable or unjustifiable, it would be totally unnecesary, making the argument moot in the first place. We should at least deal with reasons are that are somewhat within the realm of reality right?

Sorry buddy, you can continue to be the Bush loyalist and support all he does. I know, the cult of personality is strong.

But real conservatives know we're being duped.

Not just with Miers, but with just about everything this administration has done (sans the tax cuts).

I was asked to name some things I wouldn't give up to avoid another 9/11, and I did. Surprisingly to myself, I haven't been all that alarmed by what's gone on on the domestic counter-terror front in the past 4 years. Maybe I need to watch "The Siege" again.

As for the original point, I'll give no definition for torture but I think McCain's wording was good. I think senators who opposed the amendment should be vilified because they publicly opposed that wording.

I just want to make sure you really mean that before I launch into hypotheticals and am accused of being a conniving liberal again.

Paraphrases. Who accused you of being a conniving liberal? Wasn't me. I accused you of using a liberal tactic.

I'm not interested in engaging in your hypotheticals. You obviously thing losing is an acceptable outcome. I don't. And nothing we do will ever make us like them.

the "real conservative" horsecrap. You don't have the bonafides here to do that.

y no means do I say that President Bush precipitated this crisis alone by his nomination. Nothing could be further from the truth.

If nothing is indeed further from the truth than this, then how do you explain the fact that it was this particular nomination alone that set off this wave of dissent? Were it truly brewing for forty years, wouldn't there have been a sign from before the nomnation? Or in advance of Roberts' nomination?

I think that Bush did precipiate the dilemma by a single nomination. Had he nominated a female Roberts, like Mahoney, then the debate would be different indeed in scope and constituency.

You seek to shield the president for the consequences of his actions. But the nomination was a fulcrum, one he himself constrcuted with his promises and rhetoric and now upon which his legacy must be leveraged. Making excuses for him does you - or conservatism - no favors.

I don't think losing is acceptable and I don't think we're going to lose. To China, maybe, but not to Osama bin Laden.

And nothing we do will ever make us like them.

So I guess the answer is no, you didn't really mean it.

Cause real conservatives would never fight the global war on terror with guns and such.

what you will.

For your thesis to hold up Paul, one must assume that the decisive will of the people was for Bush to choose a decisively anti-Roe nominee (and of course push his political weight around to get that nominee voted in).

I see two problems with this assumption. The first was articulated in an op-ed in the NYTimes today:

Yet as more than a few abortion opponents have come to suspect, in the Oval Office the "culture of life" is from time to time trumped by the culture of electability. With abortion rights safeguarded by Roe, and Roe, in turn, safeguarded by the court, a candidate's public opposition to abortion is treated by much of the nation's pro-choice majority as a more or less immaterial wish that's unlikely to be fulfilled. For the millions of highly motivated pro-life voters, however, it's much more: it's a statement of solidarity and a solemn vow to advance their special cause.

This lopsided investment in anti-abortion rhetoric has allowed Presidents Reagan, Bush and Bush to collect the votes of the anti-abortion faithful without paying much of a price among the electorate at large. But imagine what would happen if a Republican president actually honored the promise, explicit or implied, to engineer a court majority to overturn Roe. Republican opposition to abortion rights would no longer be theoretical. And moderate voters, who have learned to discount anti-abortion hypocrisy, would surely exact a high electoral price for the Republicans' new sincerity.

The second is what you use to critique the Left, ignoring their central belief (i.e., that Bush is not the legitimate President). Yes, I know that's been beaten to death...we've dismissed the half-million more votes Gore got, and we dismissed the role the drumbeat of fearmongering played in defeating Kerry (who would not have been running against an incumbent Gore, in all likelihood). But it's precisely the decisive will of the people those leftists you are horrified or disgusted by are actually fighting for in their minds. They're equally disgusted that many on the right are so single-minded that they've supported this clear failure of a presidency, throwing so much else to the wayside, simply to get their desired choice on the bench.

We have a rule about sharp sticks around here.

Sorry buddy, you can continue to be the Bush loyalist and support all he does. I know, the cult of personality is strong.

That's a sharp stick. This is your one warning.

when you either believe that you are terminating the life of a human being or you are not.

Not sure what the Tribune survey was based on, but my take is that lots of people certainly agree that abortion is a "bad" thing.

But based on the Million+ women having abortions each year since 1973 (and no doubt the men who got them pregnant and didn't want the baby either), I have to believe that if push came to shove there is very little tolerance for anything more than token limitations on abortion.

Ultimately there will have to be some resolution where people settle what kind of abortion policy they want. I think unfortunately, that resolution won't look that much different then current conditions, and republicans will get pummled in the process.

The main reason democrats have been doing poorly at the national level is that they haven't been able to offer any meaningful issues that  motivate their base AND that the majortity of America would be on board with. If Roe was overturned, it would give them one, and you can bet they would be singing from the rooftops about "misogynist theocons that want to keep women barefoot and pregnant." Scaring people is what they are best at- see current status of social security reform. They'd have a field day with Roe being overturned.

may occasionally be necessary. One of the NRO guys (Jonah? Derbyshire?) once wrote a column in which he posited that occasionally there may be a need to resort to certain immoral and publically unacceptable practices-- euthanasia, for example, or the police roughing up a suspect, but that when this necessity arises the activity must take place outside the public eye, and should it come to light publicly then we must disavow the action and punish, harshly and publicly, those directly responsible. I think that this abuse of prisioners certainly falls in this category, and rather than defending the action with legal pettifiggery we need to accept and proclaim that No, it must not be done and those who did it must be punished with great show.

This nomination has had me all riled up, that's all. Venting. My apologies.

we ought not, at least in most cases, make extraordinary efforts to bring to light extraordinary deeds done in extraordinary circumstances.

to my view, though I respectfully disagree.

I have no desire to simply trust anyone, in particular a politician. It is true that "if you don't trust people, you will never be able to acomplish your goals in life," but I just don't see how it applies here.

I honestly don't understand how anyone can accept the suggestion that we simply trust the president here. He should just lay the cards on the table.

I don't not see how it is "self-defeating" to nominate someone for who there is no ambiguity.

between yours and the subsequent post...

While I most certainly view torture as something that we must not sink to, I do not equate torture and interrogation as synonymous; which I hope others won't construe as splitting hairs.

Generally speaking, as far as what has been released regarding Gitmo, I don't see anything as conclusively torture.  Conversely some of what the government admitted to at Abu Grabe was torture.  I would be more glad of the fact that we procecuted the guilty, save for the lingering doubt that the convicted appear to have been sacrificial lambs and that the ones giving the orders may have gotten off, but I'll concede that is my conjecture and may not be the reality of the situation.

Part of the reason for my distaste for the "ends justify the means" is that too often I watch (not just on the war on terror, but in general) as our "civil servants et al" do what is expediant rather than what is right.  The problem with it is that I believe that when expedience is contrary to what is right, the expedient actor surrenders a part of his humanity to the dirty deed, so to speak.  Do enough expedient things and one's moral compass becomes so broke as to be useless.  Then we hear statements like, "I was just doing my job."

Oh well, maybe I'm over reacting or reading more into than I should, but I'd rather be the voice saying, "hold up a bit..." than remain silent.

Talk about the slippery slope.  Genocide, establishment of a totalitarian regime, and  rescission of the Bill of Rights are all "catastrophic harm" too - a single instance of torture that prevents another 9/11 is not - you got anything else?

Plain and simple - interpretting the words "born or naturalized" as "unborn" - just because it would be OUR "judicial activism" doesn't make it right.

But what has me hacked off is that the wording of the McCain bill, for example, has no substance save for that which is assumed by the hearer.  It won't matter that, or if, all of the pertinent terms are defined in military codes.  People will hear such terms as "cruel" and "degrading" and assume that they mean whatever they would consider cruel and degrading if done to themselves - and let us just stipulate that few Americans have even the slightest comprehension of cruelty and degradation.  

For example, I certainly don't consider it either to have a terrorist interrogated by a woman in a tight t-shirt.  Neither do I consider that Ron Jeremy ringer, Khalil Sheikh Mohammed, to have been degraded by his experience with the waterboard.  

So, while I believe that the relevant terms must be defined, and defined so as to accomodate virtualy everything we have done short of the Abu Ghraib stuff, I simply don't believe that this debate should occur publically.  Civilians - most of them - are unlikely to get it, and will only give the enemy more information than they should have.

I guess when you wrote "ANY" in capital letters, you didn't actually mean it. Just like streiff didn't mean "Period."

Yeah, yeah, it was implicit, stop being a jerk, asf6. Fine. I'm not trying to be annoying. I'm just trying to point out that the extreme language has got to go. I already said I'm not terribly disturbed by the Patriot Act, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, all the other things that have caused such a hue and cry on the left. Some of the things they find objectionable may even be good. But I want it proclaimed loudly and proudly that there are some depths to which we won't sink. These GOP senators seem to be shrinking from that.

Maybe I threw in the "means justify the ends" too lightly - I don't think blowing up the entire planet is a proper "means" for any ends.

These Senators are saying, as I am, that a single instance of even torture we all agree is "torture" that prevents another 9/11 is not bad.

pretty clear to anyone who cared to read it. The only important thing in war is winning. Period. There are no prizes for second place. If you aren't willing to do whatever it takes to win then you are saying that winning isn't as important as some other action. It's really that simple.

The fact that I'm not going to play fetch for you doesn't take away from what I said.

I understood you, streiff  ;  )

but you're never going to have that situation. "If we could just torture this proven terrorist, we'd for sure get the information that would prevent a tragic terrorist attack, but that despicable McCain Amendment makes it illegal! Blast!"

I'm not going to nitpick all day. My main point is the one I already made--I don't think they have to draw the line, they just have to say there is a line.

Fetch or other, I don't care to play either. See just above if you want to discuss substantive points.

You implied that there were more important things than winning a war. I didn't see them listed or discussed.

> Roe is a representation, by substitution, of everything that has gone wrong with Constitutional law over the course of the past 40 years.

That's kind of a sweeping statement, isn't it? And what is there in the Constitution that says one CAN'T have an abortion?

> A federal right to butcher one's unborn, partially born, or born children was not part of the understanding

Individual rights WERE part of the understanding, though. The mother has a right to do what she wants with her body. I'm guessing your argument will be that the fetus has rights that must be defended, but that's an ideological difference between us.

http://www.redstate.org/comments/2005/10/6/9330/21710/65#65

That'll never happen? Fine. You're just trying to flame us by comparing the Patriot Act to abolishing the Bill of Rights, or torture to genocide? No.

Regardless of whether or not these things are likely, I think even you would agree they're more important than winning a war. And I'd like to see some acknowledgement of that fact from my government. To extend the line metaphor, from what I gather, you're saying there is a line, and we shouldn't cross it, but we never will anyway so the debate is moot. Yeah?

Were it truly brewing for forty years, wouldn't there have been a sign from before the nomnation?

Here was a very big sign, almost ten years ago. Aziz, you're a smart guy, but the history of American conservatism is not your strong suit.

Not to cut the President any slack, but this tension has been around in one form or another for fifty-odd years. It got particularly sharp during the Seventies and Eighties. It was muted in the Nineties, because of a common opponent; but it's not like this is the first iteration.

My argument does not hinge on the question of abortion. Nor does it hinge on the person of George Bush. (1) Judicial usurpation is much larger than abortion and (2) the Republican party is, unquestionably, the (very narrow) majority party right now. Bush's own elections have been very close, but who can gainsay the GOP majorities in the Congress?

I'm sure alot of Leftists think they really have the people behind them. They are mistaken.

Even "individual rights" are limited - you think the Founding Fathers would have approved of partial-birth abortion?!  How about the right of said "mother" to not only kill her unborn baby, what about herself in the process - were the Founding Fathers in favor of suicide?  There are PLENTY of limits on "individual rights".

your position is that it would have been better for Hitler to have triumphed in World War II or the Soviets to have won the Cold War than "crossing a line." No, I don't agree with that at all.

had been dissolving the Congress, or gassing German-Americans, or murdering political dissenters in their homes, then yes, of course that's my position. I'd be a little disgusted if it weren't yours.

Once again, we're not at that point. I'd like to make darn sure we never get close.

> you think the Founding Fathers would have approved of partial-birth abortion

You think it wasn't done back then? And the Founding Fathers aren't the ultimate source of wisdom. They did have slaves, remember...

> How about the right of said "mother" to not only kill her unborn baby, what about herself in the process

Oh, come on, is she really your concern? If so, then how do you feel about abortions when the mother's life is in danger?

> were the Founding Fathers in favor of suicide

They may not have been sad when it happened, but no, I'm pretty sure they would've found a law preventing suicide as ridiculous as I do. They probably would've known that they weren't their brother's keeper, and so if someone was in pain and wanted to die, that's their choice to do so. Who are you to tell them they can't?

"crossing a line" - they want to make "torture"  THE line and I just can't agree with that - as someone pointed out, obviously there is A "line" (destroying the entire planet and everyone on it would be counterproductive to the survival motivation behind fighting in the first place).

it is necessary togo so far down the slippery slope.

As far as I can tell this vote only affirmed prosecuting criminals for crimes already spelled out on the books, and affirming practices that the military already has guidelines for.

Questioning of genocide or forfeiture of the cause, as you two alternatively seem to believe, is ridiculous.

Moreso, I don't believe the torture issue is even a blip on the radar of a "what is more important than winning the war" game. IBM should not be closed down, nor declared a success, because some lower level fool committed a crime which, in some abstract sense, was viewed as "helping the company" or "hurting the company".

and I disagree with you that this vote was only about making torture the line. It was also about acknowledging that there's a line at all. I, for one, am glad they did.

are the GOVERNMENT.  And, the PRIMARY aim of a just government is to protect the lives of citizens - even if someone's "individual" rights are trumped - you can't possibly mean that individual rights are unlimited, especially in areas of collective needs.  If you carry a passport to exit and re-enter this country, you are giving up an "individual right" - so what?   Think your absolute position through - it leads to chaos and anarchy.

clearing all of that up.

...but I certainly hope Ms. Coulter will be at least as forthcoming in her apology.

Ditto.

Even from Coulter, that last line was dumb.

.. this line of thought. Why create a horrifying this or that scenario and then criticize the responder?

It's as evil to support a win for Hitler as it is to support Genocide. It's as evil to permit genocide as to participate in it. Telling someone "if you had to chose between participating in genocide or allowing it, which would you chose" seems fruitless and, frankly, strange. The comparison only works if the details are not fleshed out. Once you start getting into the "well what if this happened" and "ok, but how about if they did this" type of details the whole thing grays right back out.

It's not simply that this type of choice won't happen in this war, or because we won't go there, it's simply not a choice that will happen in reality.

Drafting some kind of document stating our resolve not to end the world seems like a pretty meaningless gesture to me. Sounds to me like this torture document ploy is along the same lines. Lots of show, no purpose.

I think you are falling prey to a fallacy here.  Sure, if torturing one guy prevented another 9/11, I could accept it.  But it reality, it doesn't work out that way.  Alot of the detainees aren't known terrorists, they are suspected terrorists.  At least some of them are innocent - this is especially true in Iraq, where language and culture barriers and the general confusion of war will make errors a lot more frequent.  Would you approve the torture of an innocent man in the name of stopping another 9/11?  Ten innocent men?  Twenty?  

Which brings us to another problem - a practical issue, rather than a moral one.  What is the reliability of the information gotten by torture?  An innocent person, or a terrorist who isn't really in on any of the important information, might well resort to making up what they think their captors want to hear.  The result is incorrect intelligence - worse, I would think, than no intelligence at all.  In an extreme case, what if torture prevented us from stopping a terrorist attack, because wrong information led us astray?  

I think there's another practical issue here, which has to do with the world at large.  If the United States seems to be condoning torture, we will lose a lot of support from our allies, and we will earn a lot of hatred from people who haven't decided whether or not to be our enemies.  The last thing we want to do is increase public support for terrorists in the Middle East.

In his veto, then, Bush should acknowledge that we will not nuke the entire planet and kill every living being.  There's a "line" I'm comfortable with.

Seriously. With teeth.

It makes me feel more confident that we're not going to inadvertently destroy American democracy anytime soon, simply because somewhere, somebody is watching. That's my opinion. You're free to disagree.

lead to the complete censorship of the interwebs.

Of course they're not unlimited. The "Not really" in my subject line was referencing the examples you gave, but it may have looked like a reference to your subject line--i.e., "There are limits". Sorry for the confusion.

Not sure what your argument is, other than that.

sure, general unrest from social conservatives on whether the party is being faithful or not has been around. But you're extending the window back a decade; I was talking about a window of a month.

Though, RedState is an anamoly, you've been telegraphing your stance for a while (the golf references, etc). Broader conservatism, or should I say Republicanism, hasnt been from what Ive seen. A link to an obscure decade-old journal doesnt quote invalidate my assertion that before the nomination of Miers, no one was talking full scale revolt. Now they are. Cause and effect seem pretty black and white to me.

Anyway, i still would like to see a genuinely conservative AND qualified nominee. Maybe Miers is the former, but not the latter. I stand by what I posted in my Diary earlier.

I do not believe nominating a judical canadiate with openly strict constructionist rulings is self-defeating.  I disagree with the President's view that this was the best choice.  Still, I can see why he could have felt this was a good decision.

http://cicero.redstate.org/story/2005/10/4/21447/4796

All of that is moot.  The nomination has been made. Now it would be self-defeating to rally conservative opposition to Miers.  We should have sent clearer signals before the nomination, but we make our decisions based on what we can do, not on what we should have done.

I feel that the best thing we can do now is be quiet publicly, support Miers, hope Bush knows what he's doing, and do our grumbling in private.  If it turns out that Bush has screwed up... well, feel free to do all the screaming you want.  I'll bring the sackcloth and ashes.

This Hidden Constitution stuff has Got. To. Stop.  Abortion was widely prohibited throughout the US and never once did any substantial percentage of the electorate, or the intellectual class pause to inquire into whether some so-called right thereto, derived from an unmentioned, unrecognized general right to privacy, itself predicated upon an never-mentioned-in-the-Constitution unconditioned exaltation of "individual rights", existed.  The problem with your attempted deduction of the right to the private use of violence against one's unborn children from the notion of individual rights is that the latter, in the general, categorical sense required, does not occur in the Constitution, and that, even if that notion did occur, or were implicit, the Constitutional warrant for the abortion license still would not follow, inasmuch as there exists an abundance of historical American legislation against abortion.

Your argument, such as it may be, entails the dubious and risible notion that the Founders bequeathed to us a document which, in spite of their own convictions and the opinions of their age, enshrines the cultural agenda of the left logically and necessarily, that the essence of the thing was hidden from all ages until 1973.  It is fully as absurd as claiming that despite the fact that Christ had apostles, and taught them what the faith was to be, the essence of Christianity was not grasped until, well, fill in any date you wish.  

Organic growth, not new revelation.  As I said, the entire meme of the Living/Hidden/In Abeyance Constitution has Got. To. Stop.

the clear support of John Roberts was the "clear signal" for the type of judge that should be appointed. I have no problems with Miers being defeated or withdrawn.

except that their involvement in appointing new judges is secondary...Bush was never in a million years going to nominate a Ginsburg, so that majority is only marginally the issue here as I see it.

Judicial usurpation is much larger than abortion

So I keep reading on Redstate. That message gets a bit blurry by the time it reaches those of us on the left though. Very rarely do I see any discussion of what a bad choice Harriet is without the issue of abortion being hinted at strongly or referenced directly. I can appreciate that the two are separate issues, but they seem joined at the hip with regards to why "Harry's" a disappointment. Just sayin'

Nor does it hinge on the person of George Bush.

Your argument about the Left does as far as I can see, though, no?

They may not have been sad when it happened, but no, I'm pretty sure they would've found a law preventing suicide as ridiculous as I do.

Given that suicide was illegal in English common law at the time and for a considerable period afterwards, it's unlikely that they held the same views as you do.

They probably didn't, at least not all of my views. I'm not sure they quite shared your views, either, though. Politics change, so do laws. Preferably, though, the change doesn't result in loss of personal freedoms.

It's an honest question.

Relax.

...I have a doctorate, and yet I still have trouble parsing what you say. So does the Constitution address abortion or not?

don't jump in it.

Refering to the First Things End of Democracy symposium as "an obscure decade-old journal" demonstrates once again that you are not aware of the real faultlines within American Conservatism. The usurpation of the Court is one of the deepest of those faultlines.

In the way Roe, Doe, Casey, legal realists and lefty thinkers imagine?  No.

In the sense that the unborn are persons and that the Fourteenth Amendment provides that no persons shall be deprived of life without due process of law, possibly.  

> In the sense that the unborn are persons and that the Fourteenth Amendment provides that no persons shall be deprived of life without due process of law, possibly.

OK, so because the Consitution does not outlaw abortion, using a strict interpretation of the Constitution to stop the practice would require a decision that a fetus is considered a person (which is an ideological issue), in which case the 14th Amendment could be applied? But even if that Amendment were applied, because "due process of law" is allowed, an abortion could still be allowed to continue if the court gives the go-ahead?

in this context, indicates my uncertainty concerning the tenability of a line of argument advanced by many conservatives with whom I otherwise find myself in agreement.  

And no, if such an interpretation were advanced, it would not follow that an abortion could proceed under due process, inasmuch as it is impossible for an unborn child to commit a crime, much less one which could eventuate in a capital sanction.  

As to the question of personhood, upon which much is this argument hinges, I will say that too many people are confortable with the concept of human nonpersons, not merely because the concept is itself disreputable, but because the consequences are so easily predicted.  We could play stipulative games (because they cannot be anything more) with the notion all day, and no one will be any more right, or wrong, than anyone else, given the initial assumptions of the exercise.

> "We could play stipulative games (because they cannot be anything more) with the notion all day, and no one will be any more right, or wrong, than anyone else, given the initial assumptions of the exercise."

Thanks for the thoughts on the matter, though.

Hah!  I should have known. I go on vacation and suddenly you decide to start posting.

Buck up!  I admit I'm a "Dogface" (see Captain Ed's new article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/07/AR200510070
2311.html ),

but at tleast I'm an optimistic one!