They both seem much angrier this time. The format is certainly different...
Posted by Charles Capps (Member # 9) on :
Much angrier, yes. Bush seemed to lose it a few times against Charlie very early on.
The beginning was much worse than the end... both are still beating the same drums, saying the same things over and over... dodging questions, going back to different issues other than what the question asked in the first place.
A few REALLY good questions were asked.. most were dodged.
I think that the abortion question at the end underlines one of my beefs with Bush. Bush seems to see the world in shades of black and white, with no grey area in between. You're either for us or against us. Something is either perfectly right or perfectly wrong. But that isn't the way the world works, Mister President....
Posted by Toadkiller (Member # 425) on :
For the love of God. Bush was asked if he made a mistake and he would NOT answer the question. That is just crap.
Arrrrrrgggggghhhhhh
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Well, he said he made a mistake with several appointments. I would read that as Paul O'Neil. I think what that questioner wanted to hear was whether he thinks he has made any major foreign policy mistakes. He obviously doesn't think he made the wrong decisions on the major issues he's faced.
[ October 08, 2004, 08:50 PM: Message edited by: David Sands ]
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Internets.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"Bush seems to see the world in shades of black and white, with no grey area in between. You're either for us or against us. Something is either perfectly right or perfectly wrong. But that isn't the way the world works, Mister President...."
Bush made his inability to see the color grey about as clear as he possibly could tonight. Kerry said this:
"Well, again, the president just said, categorically, my opponent is against this, my opponent is against that. You know, it's just not that simple. No, I'm not.
"I'm against the partial-birth abortion, but you've got to have an exception for the life of the mother and the health of the mother under the strictest test of bodily injury to the mother.
"Secondly, with respect to parental notification, I'm not going to require a 16-or 17-year-old kid who's been raped by her father and who's pregnant to have to notify her father. So you got to have a judicial intervention. And because they didn't have a judicial intervention where she could go somewhere and get help, I voted against it. It's never quite as simple as the president wants you to believe."
And Bush responded:
"Well, it's pretty simple when they say: Are you for a ban on partial birth abortion? Yes or no?
"And he was given a chance to vote, and he voted no. And that's just the way it is. That's a vote. It came right up. It's clear for everybody to see. And as I said: You can run but you can't hide the reality."
So Bush is explicitly stating that, in his mind, if you vote for or against something, it unequivocally means you are for or against every single conceiveable aspect of it.
Obviously, that explains why he can't understand the lack of contradiction between Kerry's vote to give him the right to start a war, but now saying that Bush's actual prosecution of the war was a cock-up. In Bush's mis-wired brain, saying "President, you have the authority to go to war" automatically includes the qualifier "and any manner in which you choose to do so is now, by definition, infallible".
Just remember, everyone: a vote for Bush means you agree with everything he does, with zero exceptions.
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
To the Bush administration, "nuance" is a four-letter word.
And given Bush's ability to spell, that might be more literal than metaphoric.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Has anyone mentioned this? Old news I know, but new to me.
Posted by Charles Capps (Member # 9) on :
Yeah. The same lump was present tonight. General speculation elsewhere is that it's just a kevlar vest.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Puppett Master in the spinal cord.
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
After sleeping on it, a few comments on the debate. A lot of my comments are going to seem critical of Bush, but I am going to try to make up for it by saying what I think he means, but knows it is too unpopular to say.
The first thing that I thought was good was the questioning format. I thought the questions were far more straightforward than those Jim Lehrer or Gwen Iffil gave. There weren�t that many dependent clauses to imply evil motives. Examples of how it could have been are, �Mr. Kerry, since you have voted more times that I can count to raise taxes on every American, rich and poor, would you be willing to say you won�t raise taxes as President?� and �Mr. Bush, since rumor has it that you eat Spotted Owl every morning for breakfast, have you done anything for the environment that ought to make me vote for you?� I wish we could see such questioning more. It also has the side benefit of making the debate easier for someone to follow and gives the candidates more time to talk.
Speaking of time to talk, I also loved how the moderator ran the format. I seldom heard him precisely laying out the amount of time each candidate had when responding (at least compared to Gwen Iffil). It made it move much faster.
I think Kerry sidestepped a few important issues. Abortion was one. Charles is right that most Americans don�t see abortion in black or white, all or nothing, terms. There are probably about four groups along the spectrum of how illegal abortion ought to be. However, there was an important quote from Kerry: �you don't deny a poor person the right to be able to have whatever the constitution affords them if they can't afford it otherwise.� That�s a very radical statement if he meant it precisely as I�m reading it. He seems to be saying that if someone has a right to an abortion, then because there is inequality of people�s means, the government should equalize those means by paying for them to exercise their rights. That sounds suspiciously like public financing of abortions to me. As for the partial birth abortion exception Kerry gave, he said there needed to be one for the life and health of the mother �under the strictest test of bodily injury to the mother.� If he is abandoning the exception of harm to the psychological health of the mother, I wish he would have said so. But it that�s what he really meant, that would be an unequivocal move away from NARAL�s policy. That said, I still think Kerry is ultimately inconsistent since he has said that life begins at conception. If it really does, and you believe all lives are equally worthy, then your policies ought to reach more than just your coreligionists. TSN said�
quote: So Bush is explicitly stating that, in his mind, if you vote for or against something, it unequivocally means you are for or against every single conceiveable aspect of it.
I would disagree. The question that was asked did not refer to any exceptions for the life or health of the mother. Some room has to be given for common sense exceptions on most issues in a debate, but on an issue that has become so technical at its margins, like abortion, I think the better policy is to take a question like that at face value. Kerry�s yes or no answer to that question was he thought you should be able to have one. But he was being a smart debater by not playing into the questioner�s hands by saying yes or no because people would not have listened to his qualifications afterwards.
Bush did surprisingly well on the environmental question. I was not expecting him to know so many programs that his administration had done. I doubt that answer is going to change many votes, but it was a trap laying wide open for him and he jumped clean over it. The drug reimportation answer was a good justification for not opening the floodgates to Canadian medicine. I don�t think it�s the most important justification (just like WMDs), but it�s the one that easiest to understand (again, like WMDs) and therefore was made the frontmost reason.
On foreign policy, Bush followed up on a lot of lines of attack that I had been expecting during the first debate. He used the Duelfer report to make the point that the sanctions were not working, that Saddam was building a knowledge base for a WMDs program, with the intent of getting them eventually. While Saddam did not have them already, in time he would have. Bush made it clear (without using the word �preemption�) we had to stop him before he got his hands on him. He also went after Kerry�s vote to cut the intelligence budget in the early 1990s.
One thing I wish Bush had said about foreign policy that he just can�t without sounding like a cold-hearted robot: in response to the question about protecting the homeland, what would each candidate do. I�ll admit Kerry is right that we�re not doing enough to be scanning containers. There are a lot of things we�re not doing. On the other hand, has anyone ever thought about how expensive it would be to plug every hole like that? People say they want economic growth, but a homeland security program that hit every vulnerability would plunge us into a recession! The better solution is to work on the worst vulnerabilities here and drain the swamps overseas of despotism. Plus, it has the added benefit of bringing the American Way (along with truth and justice, I hope) to a part of the world that has seen too little of it.
There was one answer Bush couldn�t give to another foreign policy question. One person asked about North Korea and Iran and asked what he was doing about them. Ideally, Bush would have said that Iraq was the most doable of the three, and we were hoping to scare others into submission with a show of force. Moreover, we don�t have the manpower to do all three at once. We have to choose our battles. Instead, Bush went with While we were handling Iraq we would keep the pressure on them with diplomacy (on Iraq, through the EU, France and Germany being prominent members of that team; on North Korea, through us, Russia, South Korea, China, and Japan).
Bush I thought lightened up a lot this time. Body language was much more fluid. No looks of annoyance at having to put up with inanity. He made only two gaffes I noticed in the debates, �internets,� as Sol System pointed out, and a military that is more �facile.� Fortunately, there didn�t seem to be any disasters he felt compelled to attend to during the day. He was rested. And he made the audience audibly laugh twice. No such humor from Kerry. It�s a nitpicky point, but lots of people base their decisions on such features.
The one question where both candidates made my skin crawl was Charlie Gibson�s followup about neither saying specifically what they would do to reduce the deficit. For me, it would have been sufficient for Bush to say he would lower taxes, stimulate growth, and let the economy grow itself out of the deficit a la the nineties. Bush mentioned tax cuts to stimulate consumer spending. But I guess supply-side economics has just gotten too pejorative a feel to say it explicitly. Kerry was caught between a rock (looking into the camera for no new taxes) and a hard place (Gibson�s followup) and tried to deflect the question by talking about tax cuts for the rich and Enron. Not the most cohesive message. I would give Kerry a slight edge on this question because Bush didn�t veto the farm bill, the steel tariffs, and the prescription drug benefit. Maybe he�s saving that for Term 2.
Still though, Bush seems to have edged Kerry out on the debate. Realclearpolitics.com is saying the debate was probably a tie (being within the margins of error), but the pundits were much more impressed with Bush. The state-by-state polls won�t be out until after the weekend, but I would predict that Bush will bring the race back to the uncomfortably close lead he enjoyed before the first debate. Of course, I saw one poll saying that the number of undecideds was actually 0%. (!) By that they mean that the people leaning to, but not committed to, one candidate of the other now takes up the remainder of voters. If that�s the case, these debates would actually take on a very different dynamic, since debates reinforce perceptions in those who are leaning, seldom changing them. But trying my best to look at this debate realistically, I would put it as Bush by a lock of hair, as opposed to a mere shaft. The race has tightened once again.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
I might have something to say about all that, but I'm busy packing for our move.
Then I'll be busy moving...
Then I'll be busy unpacking...
BUt I did find Keith Olbermann's boxing style of scoring the debate amusing. He scored it Kerry 16, Bush 6.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Let's not forget that the President bravely came out against appointing judges in favor of slavery.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
Speaking of Mr. Bush and the Supreme Court...I could hardly believe he said this:
quote:Plus, I want them all voting for me.
And I would imagine that even David has a problem with Mr. Bush's interpretation of the Dred Scott case.
quote:Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights.
That's a personal opinion. That's not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States says we're all -- you know, it doesn't say that. It doesn't speak to the equality of America.
Despite his Yale education, the man seems to know very little about the history of the United States.
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Well, I would imagine some of them, if not picked, might vote for the other side! Especially the more libertarian ones who don�t like to see new and expanded spending programs.
Since Jay was nice enough to mention me, I thought I would chime in. I�m not sure what about that interpretation was wrong, but let me see if I can tease out the meaning. If I�m missing something huge you�re seeing, feel free to respond. What follows is my rough understanding of what President Bush was trying to get at. I want to be very clear here that this is a tentative analysis and that it�s been a long time since I�ve really thought about this case. It might be 180 degrees in the wrong direction.
As for Scott v. Sanford, 19 U.S. (How.) 393 (1856), there are several levels on which one could evaluate that case. First there was the procedural holding (which is very important later on to what I think Bush was getting at).
The procedural issue was whether Scott had standing to bring his case. This is a critical issue in any litigation. Someone without standing is not permitted to argue the merits of the case. There are important reasons for this. It ensures that someone with sufficient stake will vigorously argue the merits. Because there is also another doctrine called res judicata, standing ensures that only someone who is palpably affected by a decision will argue it, and that someone who has no real interest can�t bind future litigants on the issue before they have a chance to intervene on their own behalf.
Chief Justice Taney decided (along with the majority) that states did not have the right to bring into their political communities those who had not been citizens before the adoption of the Constitution, and they had no rights to force the federal government to accept as citizens it had not accepted as such. Moreover, the existence of two clauses in the Constitution referring to those held in servitude implied a legal accommodation to the existence of slavery. While the Declaration of Independence said that all men had been created equal, the later of the two documents accepting slavery, and the creation of both documents by the same class of men, implied that slaves were not of the same class as whites. Therefore, Scott had no rights to sue for his freedom in a federal court.
However, Chief Justice Taney didn�t stop with a procedural ruling (which good judicial practices would have counseled him to do). He put forth a substantive holding as well.
There had been a principle that slavery was not supposed to exist in states that had not approved of such ownership within their territory. Also, the Missouri Compromise was a national statement that the territories, held by the United States in trust, could legislate on the topic where it has the same kind of jurisdiction as states normally had, the police power. On the other hand, there was the constitutional principle embodied in the Privileges and Immunities Clause in Article IV that said that the right to move freely around the United States could not be fettered by any state. Part of being a citizen of the United States was being able to freely enjoy one�s property wherever in the nation. A citizen�s property may not be taken from him by the operation of the federal government unless he is afforded �due process of law� under the Fifth Amendment. These principles were in direct conflict. Taney rested on the P&I Clause and said that, not only could Scott not sue in court for his freedom, any slave could be take anywhere in the territories.
This was a radical step beyond the issue framed in the pleadings. The case was in principle supposed to be only about whether Scott could get a hearing in court. The case turned into the Supreme Court�s attempt to settle the issue to what lengths slavery could operate throughout the United States. This was ultimately a political question, not a legal question. To put it simplistically, legal questions are typically about the operation of an established legal principle. Political questions are about how people prioritize the core set of about 3-5 values (depending on how you divide them) that this country was founded upon.
What I think President Bush was trying to say was that the Supreme Court decided that, �the Constitution allowed slavery as a legal institution beyond the borders of slave states because of personal property rights.� What he dislikes about that case was that the decision was a case of (get ready for loaded phrase) judicial activism. It could have stopped with one ruling but the Court decided to try the entire socio-political issue on its own.
OK, now what does this have to do with where we are today? Ever since the Warren Court (and ultimately found in footnote 4 of Carolene Products, 304 U.S. 144 (1938)), there has been an increasing mindset among many judges that the judiciary is supposed to override the will of political majorities to protect political minorities. Now, I won�t spill much more ink here on this issue. People more learned and more intelligent than I am have spent (literally) lifetimes trying to figure out if this is the �right� way to construct the mechanisms by which we protect constitutional rights.
President Bush is trying to say he has taken one side of this issue. He believes that legislators, as the directly elected will of the people, are (at least) entitled to more deference than the various Supreme Courts around the nation have given them. Moreover, he (probably) believes that the Court should interpret the Constitution as it was commonly understood at the time of its adoption. When he said that he does not want judges using their personal views as benchmark legal principles, he means that he does not want current fads to be inalterably sheltered under the rubric of assorted clauses. He believes that if you want to make major changes to how society�s law is structured and understood, you need to work through means other than democratically untouchable officials housed in the courts.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Apparently Bush doesn't get that, no matter how the Dred Scott case turned out, someone would have called it a "matter of opinion". They found against Scott, so it's because the judges' "opinion" was that slavery was good. Of course, if they had found for Scott, people at the time would have said the justices were abolitionists who were using the case to promote their own feelings. "Activist judges", if today's terminology had existed then.
As for the abortion thing...
"The question that was asked did not refer to any exceptions for the life or health of the mother. Some room has to be given for common sense exceptions on most issues in a debate, but on an issue that has become so technical at its margins, like abortion, I think the better policy is to take a question like that at face value. Kerry�s yes or no answer to that question was he thought you should be able to have one. But he was being a smart debater by not playing into the questioner�s hands by saying yes or no because people would not have listened to his qualifications afterwards."
I'm not quite sure I see what you're getting at. Kerry said that he favors a partial-birth abortion ban, but he couldn't vote for the one presented in Congress because of the specifics of it. Bush then retaliated by saying, essentially, that a vote against any PBA ban is a vote against all PBA bans. The issue I was addressing was not the original question, nor Kerry's answer. The issue is Bush's response to that answer, and his apparent inability to understand that someone can vote against a specific bill while still supporting some portion of it.
[ October 10, 2004, 12:10 AM: Message edited by: TSN ]
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Honestly, TSN, I don't get your first sentence. What I think he was trying to say was not necessarily that slavery was bad, but that the Court went too far in its decision. They could have stopped at Scott having/not having standing and letting the political branches tackle the problem of which political value has priority, property rights or human equality. Activism can go both ways, of course. Bush wants judges to exercise a little bit more restraint in taking issues like that.
As for abortion, I see what you are getting at now. (That paragraph I wrote really wasn't well written on second sight. It needed another edit.) Perhaps what he was getting at (and I know I'm on a limb on this one; I don't have time to research the legislative history this moment) is that, in order to keep the Supreme Court from knocking down another partial birth abortion ban, Congress tried to do some fact-finding on whether there is ever really needed such an abortion for the life or health of the mother. If I recall correctly, they found that there really weren't any such circumstances that medicine had identified as demanding such a procedure. Therefore, if Kerry was voting against the ban for only that reason, then what Bush was trying to do was move past an excuse like "life and health of the mother" since no real exception was needed. If Kerry knew that, then what he was really doing was just voting no to the ban, which is what Bush was saying.
This is why I hate these debates. With only an hour and a half to talk, you can't go from A to B to C to D to E to F. You have to go from A to L to T to Z and hope your surrogates can take on the more wonkish points. But, then again, that's expecting a lot out of any candidate, and for reasons of sheer human economy, we can't reasonably expect any president to be able to talk on the level of a specialist who can afford years of study on minute, if important, issues.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
quote:Originally posted by David Sands: Well, I would imagine some of them, if not picked, might vote for the other side! Especially the more libertarian ones who don�t like to see new and expanded spending programs.
Another mid-packing post.
If it�s not abundantly clear, let me help make it so.
Mr. Bush, in making a joke about wanting the members of the Supreme Court vote for him, considering the 2000 Florida election fiasco, showed extremely poor taste and bad judgement.
[ October 09, 2004, 03:41 PM: Message edited by: Jay the Obscure ]
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Oh, I see what you were thinking now. The reason I didn't see that is that he was referring to his potential nominees voting for him as president (and most of those people know who they are since the President's counsel has been interviewing them throughout this term). Since he's not going to get to choose anyone before the election, short of three or more of the justices dying before the end of December, I just didn't think of that as a realistic possibility and worthy of outrage.
Do I feed this board "mid-packing post[s]"? I know I've gained some weight over the past three years. I didn't realize I was making everyone else fat too! Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
Making a joke about the Court voting after Florida is just bad taste.
At any rate, I'm turning off the computer to pack it away for moving.
Have a good weekend.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"Do I feed this board 'mid-packing post[s]'?"
Jay's post is the "mid-packing" one. Because he posted it while in the middle of packing.
"Perhaps what he was getting at (and I know I'm on a limb on this one; I don't have time to research the legislative history this moment) is that, in order to keep the Supreme Court from knocking down another partial birth abortion ban, Congress tried to do some fact-finding on whether there is ever really needed such an abortion for the life or health of the mother. If I recall correctly, they found that there really weren't any such circumstances that medicine had identified as demanding such a procedure."
The sponsors of the bill say there's no need for a "health" clause. The majority of the Supreme Court say there is. I have neither the time nor the resources to do the research myself, but I would tend to believe the SC in this case. Especially since there's another difference of opinion there: the SC says PBA is safer than the alternatives; the bill's sponsors say it's more dangerous. Judging from the descriptions of the procedures in the SC's majority opinion on the Nebraska PBA case, I have a hard time understanding where the Congresspeople in question could get such an idea.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
As long as I'm mentioning the Nebraska case (Stenberg v. Carhart), I'd like to suggest that anyone interested in the partial-birth abortion issue read the Supreme Court's decision on it. I suppose I should give warning, though: it goes into quite a bit of detail about the actual abortion procedures, and, well... it's not exactly the sort of thing you'll probably want to print out and read over breakfast, is all.
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
I�ll leave whether there is ever a need for a partial birth abortion to people more familiar with the issue than I. But just to give the other side for anyone who is interested, try National Abortion Federation v. Ashcroft for an opinion where the judge thinks the Supreme Court was wrong on whether this form of abortion is ever really that necessary and reciting quite a number of facts he found in trial to that conclusion.
I think your faith in the Supreme Court�s factfinding ability is a little much. This is actually one of the few areas of constitutional law I did any intensive work, and I can tell you that neither a court nor Congress is necessarily a better finder of fact than the other. I�m actually of the opinion that on certain issues, it�s better to house factfinding in the Court, but on other issues, the conflicts of interests each branch has are not of such different quanta and the propriety of one side gathering facts over another is not that clear.
There are advantages in factfinding the Supreme Court has over a legislative body. Congress is highly susceptible to (1) politicians� interest in reelection, (2) their desire to pack committees with like-minded individuals, (3) a tendency to pack legislative history with information supporting their favored view, (4) minority constraints (e.g., cloture requirements), and (5) a lack of follow-up attention after enactments, and inertia. In the litigation process, (6) the adversarial context can result in a more complete set of data than an inquisitorial context (though I would not say that Congress is without adversarial components of its own).
However, there are advantages in factfinding Congress has over courts too. (1) Members have contact with informed members of interest groups (judges are ethically obligated not to have ex parte contact with interested parties). (2) Congress also has the resources of the legislative research services at its beck and call. Courts can appoint impartial referees, but the Supreme Court seldom uses them except in cases of its original jurisdiction (e.g., land and water disputes between states). And besides, the district court in theory should have done the factual heavy lifting anyway. There are a lot of other advantages Congress has: (3) sizeable staffs attached to each representative and funds for research, (4) lack of constraints to decide controversies immediately, (5) subpoena power to marshal facts from witnesses and documents just like a court, (6) more members with backgrounds relevant to the controversy, and (7) no constraining doctrines like stare decisis. Congress (7) can also engage in complicated cost/benefit analysis that is inappropriate for a court to do. Congress (8) can reverse itself if it gets something really wrong instead of waiting for another test case.
I would also say that not all levels of courts are equal to the task either. I would much rather trust a district court judge�s findings of fact than a justice�s. The lower courts are much better equipped for that kind of factual investigation.
So while I think you have a point, TSN, that the Supreme Court might find facts better than a legislative body, I don�t think it�s a simple as putting one�s faith in that court because the justices are insulated from democratic pressures.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Well, regardless of who has the better fact-finding resources, it seems to come down to this: every time they get a bunch of doctors together to testify about it, half of them say it's safe (or safer than the alternatives) and sometimes necessary. The other half say it's unsafe (or less safe than the alternatives) and never necessary. So, if these are the experts, and even they can't agree, what are you going to do?
If the doctors can't agree, and the judges can't agree, and the legislators can't agree, we're all pretty much left to make our own opinions. And, personally, reading the descriptions of the procedures in Stenberg, the "alternatives" don't sound like they could possibly be safer or less "barbaric" as some people have brought up.
Now, the way I see it, the reason people keep proposing these bans is not because they're trying to protect the women's safety or be gentler to the babies being aborted; it's that they're opposed to abortion in general, and they're trying to find excuses to limit it where they can. Thus, the reason I think the courts are right to strike down such laws.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Regardless of the "facts", neither candidate is looking to take apro-choice stand during an election year: the pro-choicers have far too much political sway for that to be a wise move.
Why is it that common sense choices (like upholding personal freedoms) are taken for granted, while those special intrest groups that would remove personal freedoms for whatever supposedly "moral" or ethical reasons become political forces to be reckoned with?
(sigh) Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Because most people either don't recognize or don't care about the value of something until they've lost it.
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
For TSN and Jay: an article on what Bush meant in the debate when mentioned Dred Scott. I've heard most of these arguments hanging around law professors. I would disagree with the article not on target (abortion) but on scope (I think Bush meant a lot of Warren Court precedents). But Roe v. Wade is viewed by many (not just conservative law professors) as a deeply problematic case, in that it was the logical outcome of the legal realist movement. Some in the legal realist movement argued that all law, including litigation, especially at the the applleate level, is an exercise in policy-making (i.e., politics), and that it was not improper for judges to write their decisions with an eye to what the proper outcome was, not merely what the existing law was. This is a highly disputed area of what exactly are the proper bounds of judge's authority under the doctrine of judicial review (e.g., Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Abner Mikva have both said the issue probably would have been better left to legal reformers in the state legislatures). Consequently, you get opinions like that Blackmun wrote that have an uncomfortably "legislative" feel to them. Bush's mention is a stand against that.
That said, I think the article pulls its punches. What Bush really wants is a retrenchment of a lot of precedents that have increasingly come under fire in the past 20 years as unsustainable rulings of the Warren Era (e.g., criminal procedure, religious liberties, the Takings Clause, federalism). So while Dred Scott is a great example of how morality can get lost in positivism, I think Bush might have had deeper constitutional principles in mind than just the law of abortion.
[ October 11, 2004, 07:45 PM: Message edited by: David Sands ]
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
We've moved!!
Yay!!
However, I've still not set up my computer for reasons that I don't need to go into here. I am using the computer at the in-laws presently. No real time to get into things.
At any rate, when I do get it set up, I might have a thing or two to say.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
C'Mon, Jay! If you're gonna tease us about future posts, at least add some drama to it like this:
quote:Originally posted by Jay the Obscure: We've moved!!
HA!!
However, I've still not set up my computer for reasons that I don't need to go into here. I am using the computer at the in-laws presently. No real time to get into things....
But rest assured, once I do get it set up, I'll show you! Show you ALL!!
Sure you sound rabid, but at least we'll read your posts next time.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)