There is no wisdom like Liberal Larry's

Ahhhh, the genius.....

The appointment of a Supreme Court Justice should not be taken lightly. A Woman's Right to Choose is the magic hat from which all other rights are conjured - from a Right to Same-Sex Marriage to a Right to a Living Wage.

Roe terminating the GOP

Tortured headline, I know, but I don't care.

This brilliant article on RealClearolitics by Froma Harrop (hat tip -- my brother, who told me to read it) from the Providence Journal lays out how confirming a staunch anti-Roe majority on the SCOTUS would destroy -- DESTROY, I SAY!!-- the Republican party by arousing hordes of angry pro-choicers. The angy, abort-o Huns are on the doorstep!

Unfortunately, some flaws in her reasoning. (Gasp!)

First, there's this:

We speak of the "security moms" who in 2004 cared more about terrorism than about abortion.

They also never thought the right to abortion was at risk. Bush has always balanced his social-conservative talk with reassurances that abortion would remain available. When he urges abortion foes to fight on, pro-choice sophisticates dismiss it all as background noise.

But serious incursions on the right to abortion would change that. I wouldn't want to be a Republican politician the day that suburban mothers learn there's no legal way to end their 16-year-old daughter's unwanted pregnancy.

Number of problems:
Parental notification laws. Something pro-lifers support and pro-choicers don't. Why? Is it because pro-lifers want a parent-child bonding experience on the way to thte abortion clinic? Or, perhaps, because most people would a) want a voice in their own child's health care and b) because maybe they wouldn't be as quick to kill their grandchild as a panicky teen would be. I'm thinking (as do many pro-choicer's, I'd wager) that b is a pretty strong possibility.

This is also something of a non-sequitor. The fastest growing age-group of women seeking abortions isn't teenagers (which is dropping), it's women in their mid-twenties -- in other words, women whose birth control failed.

Secondly, 80% of women who have an abortion are unmarried. As in, not security moms (although roughly half are mothers themselves). As in, not the demographic
Harrop's saying would rise up to demand their minor daughters get abortions.

Secondly, how was Bush being sneaky-clever to all the pro-choicers out there during the campaign, saying he was pro-life but not so much, wink, wink? I thought that's what he was doing with the pro-lifers, overtly and super-sneakily, what with the cloning and stem-celldebates, the big deal about appointing conservative judges, etc. I thought the whole point of the judges debate during the election ultimately came down to Roe.

And do not believe for a second that pro-choicers would accept anyone moderately pro-life. Remember the outcry when Hilary simply said abortion was a tragedy for anyone? How dare she denigrate a beautiful life choice! Al Gore had to flip to pro-choice before he could run as VP (just like Bush Senior had to in 1980); Tim Roemer from Indiana had to drop out of the race for DNC chair because he was pro-life. A few moderates (Guiliani and Schwarzenegger spring to mind) on abortion can and do inhabit the GOP, but the rabid pro-choice masses are solidly Democrat, and those are the ones that swear by the sacredness of Roe.

And we continute one with our story:

The other problem in overturning Roe is that it would send the abortion issue down to the state level. Republicans don't want angry pro-choice voters rushing to the polls in 50 states. They should recall their clever move last year to put a gay-marriage ban on the Ohio ballot. It was meaningless but did draw more conservatives to the polls, who also voted for Bush. The trick works for Democrats, too.

Yeah, remember what I just wrote? And let's ponder the gay marriage thing. Aren't those pretty much teh same people voting on abortion? If it were on the ballet in any state, it would be a massive GOTV effort for both sides, advertising, campaigning, mudslinging, and fighting for months in advance. No one is going to sit back and say "yeah, sure, whatever, Roe was overturned, my work is done." And it probably wouldn't go well for pro-choicers. Things like partial-birth abortion and parental notification are a shoo-in basically everywhere. Places like the South and Midwest would have much stronger restrictions or, possibly, close to an outright ban.

And interestingly enough, women are very slightly more likely to favor tighter restrictions or outright banning than men. Go figure.

Then she goes into the Roberts nomination for a while, about how we don't know where he personally stands on abortion, but he could try to overturn Roe, but he might not, but then again he could. (Seriously -- an article should have a single point.)

Then we're mad at Congress for not funding abortions for servicepeople/families (even though Americans overwhelmingly do not support taxpayer-funded abortions). Horrors and the vapors! See, overseas Americans can't get abortions by American doctors on bases. Foreign groiups that perform abortions can't qualify for American aid. See the trend?

And then my personal favorite, because she didn't even try to follow this one through.

Republicans may not worry much about limiting the abortion rights of the poor, foreigners or even U.S. soldiers (most of whom are from modest backgrounds), but new restrictions would have nowhere to go but up the income ladder. And the upper middle class would not tolerate them.

But then in the very next sentence, her "poor people want 'em and can't kill" spiel spins like a liberal who doesn't know her issue:

Astute Republicans know this. Americans at all income levels oppose abortion, but the higher you go, the fewer opponents there are.

I thought poor people wanted to kill babies, and evil Republicans forced them to breed while rich people got to kill their babies. But then we find out that the lower on the economic totem you go the more likely you are to be pro-life. Hmmm.

By the way, interesting point -- 89% of respondants to an ABC/WaPo poll supported either state legislatures, state courts, or both to handle abortion laws. Where, exactly, should that leave nationally-mandated Roe?

Daily Dem Walk of Shame

So many stoopid things said, so little time. Hat tips to NRO's Corner and the Media Blog, Michelle Malkin, etc., etc. Listen to these, the beautiful people.

Brian Williams points out that George Washington, John Adams, and Governeur Morris are really the same as Yassir Arafat, Osama bin Ladin, al-Zawahiri, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

--Michelle Malkin

Williams previewed his argument on his MSNBC blog:

["]Many Americans woke up to a curious story this morning: several of the former Iran Hostages have decided there is a strong resemblance between Iran's new president and one of their captors more than 25 years ago. The White House and most official branches of government are ducking any substantive comment on this story, and photo analysis is going on at this and other news organizations. It is a story that will be at or near the top of our broadcast and certainly made for a robust debate in our afternoon editorial meeting, when several of us raised the point (I'll leave it to others to decide germaneness) that several U.S. presidents were at minimum revolutionaries, and probably were considered terrorists of their time by the Crown in England.["]

According to news watchers, Williams repeated the argument in his broadcast banter tonight with NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell....:

"What would it all matter if proven true? Someone brought up today the first several U.S. presidents were certainly revolutionaries and might have been called 'terrorists' by the British crown, after all."

In his blog post, it was "several of us" who came up with the morally equivalent notion. According to the above transcription, the "several" was reduced to a lone "someone" by air time. Who brought it up, Brian? Who? Do tell. Is it your own fabulously ill-informed thought? Or can you blame one or two or several low-level staffers?

--Steven Spruiell (Media Blog):

Yes, Brian, and “someone” was a mouth-breathing moron who couldn’t tell the difference between theocratic totalitarians and the democratizing authors of the First Amendment, and you should have recognized that.

--My favorite (because she's something if a dingbat anyway), from Nancy Pelosi. Experience this for yourself first. (H/t Ramesh Ponnuru, the Corner.)

Q: Later this morning, many Members of the House Republican leadership, along with John Cornyn from the Senate, are holding a news conference on eminent domain, the decision of the Supreme Court the other day, and they are going to offer legislation that would restrict it, prohibiting federal funds from being used in such a manner.

Two questions: What was your reaction to the Supreme Court decision on this topic, and what do you think about legislation to, in the minds of opponents at least, remedy or changing it?

A: As a Member of Congress, and actually all of us and anyone who holds a public office in our country, we take an oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Very central to that in that Constitution is the separation of powers. I believe that whatever you think about a particular decision of the Supreme Court, and I certainly have been in disagreement with them on many occasions, it is not appropriate for the Congress to say we're going to withhold funds for the Court because we don't like a decision.

Q: Not on the Court, withhold funds from the eminent domain purchases that wouldn't involve public use. I apologize if I framed the question poorly. It wouldn't be withholding federal funds from the Court, but withhold Federal funds from eminent domain type purchases that are not just involved in public good.

A: Again, without focusing on the actual decision, just to say that when you withhold funds from enforcing a decision of the Supreme Court you are, in fact, nullifying a decision of the Supreme Court. This is in violation of the respect for separation of church -- powers in our Constitution, church and state as well. Sometimes the Republicans have a problem with that as well. But forgive my digression.

So the answer to your question is, I would oppose any legislation that says we would withhold funds for the enforcement of any decision of the Supreme Court no matter how opposed I am to that decision. And I'm not saying that I'm opposed to this decision, I'm just saying in general.

Q: Could you talk about this decision? What you think of it?

A: It is a decision of the Supreme Court. If Congress wants to change it, it will require legislation of a level of a constitutional amendment. So this is almost as if God has spoken. It's an elementary discussion now. They have made the decision.

Q: Do you think it is appropriate for municipalities to be able to use eminent domain to take land for economic development?

A: The Supreme Court has decided, knowing the particulars of this case, that that was appropriate, and so I would support that.

All emphases mine.

Wow, where to begin. The Supreme Court is God (or the voice of God). We should trust it unquestioningly. However, believing that you own your own property is akin to heresy and violetes the separation of church (old God) and state (new god) and the state's prophets (the Court). Pelosi apparently thinks every decision from the SCOTUS is handed down from Mt. Zion, which may or may not contradict the Texas and Kentucky Ten Commandment rulings, depending on whether the interview was inside or outside of a government building.

Of course, this assumed that a) she knew what Kelo was about (um, a painfully obvious no) and b) she knew her own job well enough to know that Sen. John Cornyn and her own state legislators, among others, have proposed laws restricting using federal funds for Kelo-eminent domain uses and restricting states and municipalities from Kelo-style seizures (at this point in the itnerview, I'm actually cringing in sympathy for her). And let's just touch on her assumption that it's the job of the Congress to fund Supreme Court rulings. Wow.

As Michelle Malkin said: "[T]here is only one proper reaction to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's attempt to conceal her ignorance of the Kelo decision:

Snort.
Snort. Snort.
Guffaw.
BWAH-hah-hah-hah."