<p>My first political post in a while - I called my senators today and asked them to support Kennedy and Kerry and work on the other 3 Democrats. In my opinion, the ‘nuclear option,’ if invoked, will add to the public’s disapprobation of the Republicans and they will look even worse come November. I hope those Dems can be brave enough to do the right thing.</p>
<p>It is a total smoke screen for the Red Senators to blather on and on unctuously about “impeccable qualifications” when women’s rights, privacy rights, and checks to gunslinger abuses of Presidential power are hanging in the balance. There have been many abuses perpetrated by leaders throughout history who have had “impeccable qualifications.”</p>
<p>Members of the US voting public in the Red and Swing States, you are responsible for getting us into this situation. What were you thinking? Many of your wives, daughters, nieces, and sisters will not be very happy about it shortly after Alito is confirmed and the anti-abortion wedge cases start piling onto the court docket (shudder).</p>
<p>“Members of the US voting public in the Red and Swing States, you are responsible for getting us into this situation. What were you thinking? Many of your wives, daughters, nieces, and sisters will not be very happy about it shortly after Alito is confirmed and the anti-abortion wedge cases start piling onto the court docket (shudder).”</p>
<p>If you think about it, the voting public put Bush into power while they knew his stand on abortion. So, most of the people in the public voted for Bush, and most of the people support him on this issue.</p>
<p>“add to the public’s disapprobation of the Republicans…”
Ok, yeah, the Democrats are doing much better, especially with Kennedy going on about womens rights and how Alito is in a racist group at Princeton. But, after Chappaquiddick and the group he WAS A MEMBER of at Harvard he just looks like more like the idiot he really is. So, the Democrats really have a bad image, one of the top Dems is the biggest Hypocrite ever. Judge Alito is everything the Dems used to stand for, he came up from an average family and worked his butt of to get where he is. Alito will most liekly get confrimed, and just face the fact that most people don’t oppose this.</p>
<p>It appears to be a fait accompli. There will be no filibuster. A very good man (and a neighbor of FountainSiren’s–he no doubt learned great things from her)–will be confirmed to the court. Hopefully this is the beginning of a new era, wherein we will teach our children that the Constitution is not a “living, breathing document,” but pieces of paper with words written upon them that actually mean specific things.</p>
What is it that you don’t like about democracy? SCOTUS is not going to make abortion illegal - the most that they would ever do is turn it back to the states to decide whether they want to put any restrictions on it. Wouldn’t it be nice to end all this fighting by letting the people decide the laws that they want to live by for a change?</p>
<p>fundingfather, read The Divided America, chapters 1, 2, and 3 - then tell me we live in a democracy with a straight face. We do not. Ultimately we ended up with the structures we have (two senators for every state, regardless of the population discrepancies between, say, California and Wyoming, inadequate representation in the House per capita in the high population states, and the flawed electoral vote allocation system) primarily because of the deals that the founding fathers made to entice the slave-owning states to join the union. Personally, I wish they had thought a little harder about that decision. Would have saved us 620,000 deaths in the Civil War, at a minimum. (No slam intended against any individual now living in former slave-owning states). </p>
<p>As you know, if abortion is turned over to the states, there are many states that would immediately stop funding abortions for poor women, and some that would make it altogether illegal under any circumstances (incest, health of the mother, age of the mother, etc.). I’ll quote Clinton on this one, changing the order of his words slightly - “Rare [but] legal and safe” - that’s what more than 60% of the populace wants. If there were a person-by-person democratic referendum on this issue, abortion would remain legal.</p>
<p>I’ve always been bothered by the fact that Vermont, with a population less than most major cities, has given us Pat Leahy and Jim Jeffords in the Senate. With Bernie waiting in the wings, apparently. Shall we start a Constitutional convention? Or shall we make basic civics/history classes a prerequisite to voting? You’re going to be able to abort your rear end off, whatever happens in the SCOTUS. This is such a ridiculous distortion of our politics.</p>
<p>Actually, as a supporter of choice on abortion, I think that overturning Roe v. Wade could be a postive step. It would force the anti-choice politicians to stop hiding behind the Supreme Court and actually vote to ban abortion. And, deal with the consequences.</p>
<p>That’s the last thing the Republicans want. They’d rather appoint an activist Court to do their dirty work for them and avoid political accountability. If they want a “litmus test”, then lets have a litmus test in their election campaigns.</p>
I think you’re exactly right! That would put the issue back in the political field where it’s always belonged. Democratically decided in a republican format. </p>
<p>I only singled out Vermont because those two bozos should be slinging scoops at Ben and Jerry’s, not making sausage in the US Congress. I support our bicameral system.</p>
<p>Why do my rights hang in the balance? My right to sleep around with men I don’t particularly care for and not have consequences - consequences that I’ve been well aware of since my youth? To have those consequences disposed of by an invasive and barbaric procedure?</p>
<p>Get the law right: Roe and its progeny explicitly state that, while there is a “right” to abortion, states are not required to fund that right. Changes in Roe, therefore, will not change the status of subsidized abortions - because Roe and its progeny don’t speak to that issue.</p>
<p>Maybe with Alito on the Court, we can get some real privacy rights back, like the ones decimated by the liberals on the bench in last summer’s Kelo v. New London ruling. You know, the one that said that the government can take your home and give it to whomever it pleases. </p>
<p>Personally, I look forward to the ending of Roe… so we can stop thinking that abortion on demand is the height of feminism and start talking about why our country is so pathetic and messed up that we have 3 million unwanted pregancies every year - mostly because “birth control” is implemented after conception. Maybe we can start talking about what is really good for women - and random sex followed by abortion ain’t it. </p>
<p>aries, i agree with some what you are saying but I think it should be noted that wealthy women will always be able to get abortions if they want them; throwing it back to the states will really hurt poor women who can’t hop on a plane to a blue state. In fact, if all abortion was banned in the US, there’d still be lots of places a wealthy woman could go in Europe. Poor would = no choice.</p>
<p>I’m sorry but that dog won’t hunt. The Supreme Court is stocked to the gills with Republican political appointees (7 of 9 seats) who have been carefully vetted to toe the party line.</p>
<p>If you have any complaints about the Supreme Court, you need to take it up with party who appointed it.</p>