I explain why the answer is probably no, and that if it were yes, it would hurt the GOP:
This clip begins with an explanation of what Chief Justice Roberts did in the Obamacare case. Also, I speculate about what kind of Justices a President Romney might appoint. I don't expect them to be such staunch conservatives.
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41 comments:
Not no, but hell no . . .
The court isn't there to save the voters from being stupid.
Why can't the individual states decide?
Who says it's a top issue with most of the voters?
We have bigger problems.
If Roe .vs. Wade is overturned it will.. well save alot of babies.
Now that can't be a bad thing, right? See I don't care about the GOP.. I care about the unborn.
I'm a staunch pro-lifer but I don't believe Roe v Wade will be overturned. So whoever wants an abortion will still be free to have one whenever she likes.
No, the best we pro-lifers can do is change the environment. Then Roe v Wade won't matter.
Romney isn't going to appoint any Scalias or Thomases. He may appoint some pseudo-conservative Souter-type justices, and be quite happy with the result.
In Obamaville, you can't find a job, but you can get an abortion. Best to kill off your kids now, so they won't be unemployed at age 20.
Really, it's a nonissue. Abortion's not going to be redecided, although the fact that it remains so contentious speaks to how bad the Roe decision was.
The economy is terrible and will remain so unless the path changes. Obama and the Democrats have been a relentless hurricane to the recovery. But the wind could blow a different direction, if we want.
Abortion is a sideshow, another vajayjay cartoon, like the 'First Time' video.
If Roe is to be overturned it will be in small steps. That's the only way. Begin with banning partial birth brain suction (pleasant thought, eh libs?) and move from there.
Oh noes! Teh Ladyparts!
A "slow motion topple" is the phrase of the year.
Mitt is still a Mormon. Overturning the Roe decision is not going to scare him.
Abortion is a good issue for both parties. The Dems have a reliable boogeyman, which likely keeps a fair percentage of American women voting for them. Even some post-menopausal women are stuck on stupid on this issue.
No. The dread Traitor Roberts will not risk his invites to the cocktail party circuit. Besides, he wishes HE had thought up something as clever as a shadow of a penumbra. Instead, he just lied, and killed America.
@Pete
Pete...you sir are a smart man. You would do better in the court than the Dread Traitor Roberts.
I can't believe they've missed the one likely being considered: Brown v. The Board of Education.
Just in time for Halloween, SCt scares.
I'm pro-choice, but the way the Democrats have acted this year about choice and abortion is just plain embarrassing.
If Roe v Wade were overturned, it would be really interesting to watch the Democrats have to say what kind of limits they propose/accept in each state's legislation.
At least the pro-lifers and Republicans are questioned and have to explain and defend their position. Democrats haven't had to do that for the last 15 years or so.
Democrats keep flipping between calling Romney a staunch, hard-line conservative and a wishy-washy flip-flopper, depending on the needs of the story line for today.
In fact, he's a RINO.
I pointed out to a family member that the supreme court didn't even have the guts to overrule ObamaCare, they sure as hell aren't going to overturn Roe v. Wade, which has been place since the 70's. It's just not going to happen.
Wright: Do you think that the Supreme Court is concerned about being perceived as a consistently right-wing force?
Is anyone actually watching these videos?
'Inflammatroy emotionalism'
This! The relative disinterest President Romney expresses toward Roe v Wade will be shocking to many, though it won't deter their expressions of fear...
...and some feedback on the video format: Highly additive for the topic. Though use sparingly...
MayBee said...
If Roe v Wade were overturned, it would be really interesting to watch the Democrats have to say what kind of limits they propose/accept in each state's legislation.
There's a prety clear parallel with the state civil rights initiates passed many places in the last decade or so. In the runup the left claimed that in addition to completely removing blacks from universities across America the bill would also prevent mammograms. Of course when the laws passed not only was there no effect on mammograms, but the left immediately claimed every race based university practice was already within the requirements of the law.
Lying to the public is simply standard practice to the left.
What will determine Romney's picks for the courts is the Senate. If the republicans really do get a number of seats this election then his picks will need to be tailored to what the senate would confirm.
There is room for negotiation.
The pro-life movement is concerned with human rights violation and the devaluation of human life. The pro-choice movement is concerned with the burden of responsibility of caring for a new human life. Presumably, the pro-choice (i.e. socially liberal) people do not want abortion for abortion's sake, which would suggest a compromise where taxpayers subsidize condoms in exchange for banning elective abortion and strictly limiting all abortions throughout America.
The universal availability of condoms would also control the spread of HIV and other STDs and their associated costs to the individual and society. This financial incentive would be cause for fiscal conservatives to support this compromise as it would reduce the cost of medical care and pharmaceuticals for everyone.
So, the Fluke-type women get their condoms, the pro-life people get to preserve human rights, society benefits from reducing unproductive expenditures and healthier men and women, and humanity benefits from ending a frivolous practice which only serves to devalue human life.
At least Obama wont have "more flexability" to appoint two Muslim men ( men only need apply) with degrees in UN implementation of Sharia legal systems to stop blasphemy of the prophet.
But the Mormon prophet may have a few thoughts too.
I look forward to the Beloit College list of incoming freshmen who can't recall Bush v. Gore.
Via Lucianne: LOLOLOL
As predictable as the first frosts of autumn, there are shrieks of rage over the proposal to restrict Child Benefit payments to the first two children in a family.
On the Left, it is axiomatic that all welfare recipients are virtuous, honest and decent, while all who want to limit benefits are cruel, callous and heartless.
Such insults are being hurled at the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith — a man whose patent decency, compassion and deep concern for the plight of the poor should make such brainless barbs stick in his assailants’ throats.
The cause of the uproar was a speech Mr Duncan Smith made last week, in which he observed that the benefits system was supporting ‘dysfunctional’ and destructive behaviour.
Accordingly, he questioned whether it was acceptable that families on benefits should continue to receive ‘never-ending amounts of money’ for every child they had, while working families often couldn’t afford to have more children.
Cue hysteria from the usual suspects. On BBC TV’s Question Time last week, Labour’s Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Attorney General, was spitting tacks over the proposal. It was quite extraordinary, she spluttered, that politicians should presume to tell people how many children they should have....
The first amendment is in the constitution, and is an absolute, stated right. And yet we have various fun restrictions. In fact Obama tried to bar guns outright in DC.
Meanwhile the right to an abortion is not only not in the constitution it's a penumbra (shadow, uncertainty). And yet proposing almost any restriction is the equivalent of declaring war on women.
And we're talking about what Inga and Althouse refer to as murder of a living thing, a defenseless living thing. The time when govt is supposed to step in is to defend the defenseless. And even most pro choices at least espouse the argument that abortions should be safe, legal and rare. If that's so, what's wrong with restricting abortions during late trimesters or making abortions more rare.
Would pro abortionists say that the right to bear arms should be as unrestricted as say a woman's right to an abortion? Considering one is in the constituition and one is only in the constitution if you set looking in shadows and mysteries (in other words NOT in the constitution) then clearly one right is more inviolate than the other.
Or should be.
And if roe v wade were over ruled, the whole idea of abortion would head back to the states anyway. How would the blue states treat abortion?
Bob said...
"Romney isn't going to appoint any Scalias or Thomases. He may appoint some pseudo-conservative Souter-type justices, and be quite happy with the result."
Could be, Bob. But you assume that Supreme Court Justice selection is a wholly personal process on the part of a President. When in fact, I think that the Senate Judiciary Committee, with people like Jeff Sessions, and groups like the Federalist Society, will weigh heavily.
And it is not hard for a justice to be regarded as a hard-right jurist, if the comparison is to lefty judges like Ginsburg, Sotomayor or Kagan.
jr565:
The unborn are the only people without a voice and yet around five weeks following conception they have a conscience and are conscious.
Via Insty:
Girls of 13 given birth control jab at school without parents’ knowledge
Schoolgirls as young as 13 are being given contraceptive injections and implants during lunch-breaks without their parents’ knowledge.
School nurses have given implants or jabs to girls aged between 13 and 16 more than 900 times in the past two years, a survey by The Daily Telegraph has found. Girls aged 13 have been given contraceptive jabs and implants on more than 20 occasions.
Ahhh, jolly old England, and to pay for it also by Insty:
IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN HERE: Cystic Fibrosis sufferer denied ‘chance of life’ drug by NHS.
Cystic Fibrosis sufferer is being refused a “chance of life” drug by the NHS despite the manufacturer offering it to her for free, it has emerged.
Yes, that is sarcasm. National health care is never about costs or reforms or saving you from the mad amputating doctors which exist in the president’s mind. It’s always about control. Theirs. Not yours.
There is some debate over Romney's tenure as Governor of Mass, the judicial appointments he made, and whether the Governor's Council or a lack of talent reduced the number of conservative he appointed to the bench.
This is the Globe's spin on the issue, of course.
Governor’s Council, blamed by Romney for rejecting GOP judges, not viewed as partisan
During last night’s Republican [2011] presidential primary debate, Mitt Romney blamed an obscure pre-colonial body – the Massachusetts Governor’s Council – for his failure to appoint more conservative judges when he was governor.
The comment cast a rare light on the little-known elected body, but it offered a misleading take on the role of the governor’s council in vetting judges, according to several attorneys either involved in nominating process, or close observers of it...
Asked during the debate why only one fourth of the judges he appointed were Republican, Romney cast the council as an obstruction to conservative agenda.
“They go before something known as the Governor’s Council,” Romney said. “It consists of, I believe, seven members, all of whom are elected Democrats. And so to be able to get my appointments through, I had to have people of both parties. And the people I put forward, all were individuals who I vetted very carefully to make sure they would follow the rule of law.”
In fact, the Governor’s Council has nine members, including the lieutenant governor, who was a Republican under Romney, but not always counted by observers as a regular member of the council. The other members were Democrats during his administration. The council, under the state constitution, approves the governor’s appointments to judgeships and certain other posts.
The body is often maligned and even mocked, more because of its members’ sometimes strange antics than any partisan agenda.
The council is not known to vet judicial candidates based on party affiliation. At most, and especially more recently, members ask about political donations in hopes of preventing patronage. In addition, the council seldom rejected applicants during Romney’s tenure.
David W. White Jr., a past president of the Massachusetts Bar Association said the council was “absolutely not” concerned with party affiliation when Romney was governor.
“The Governor’s Council historically has accepted the nominations of the judicial nominating commission and the governor when they’re made and it’s only something extraordinary that would cause them to turn down an applicant,” he said.
Romney was known for seeking prosecutors and other attorneys considered pro “law and order,” and was usually successful in sitting them on the bench. He never had a vacancy on the Supreme Judicial Court, which would have been his best chance to make an ideological mark on the courts.
Romney’s first chief legal council, Daniel B. Winslow, who served from 2002 to 2004, established a non-partisan process for vetting judges through the Judicial Nominating Commission that was touted as a national model, because the primary application was judged blindly. That meant name, race, gender, and party affiliation, were not known during the initial review. Party affiliation was never a consideration, he said...
Winslow said that during the two years he served in the administration, the major reason Romney had few Republican appointments was a result of the talent pool.
“The fact is that there simply aren’t a lot of conservative lawyers in Massachusetts who were available for judgeships,” he said. “The pool of applicants was very low in many respects.”
Near the end of Romney’s term, in 2006, that he stripped the Judicial Nominating Commission of many of its powers, allowing his administration to put a more direct stamp on the judiciary, as he prepared to run for president.
The mood of the country, mostly because of ultrasound, is turning against abortion and the cause of Federalism is the dominant one in Conservatism.
Assuming the Senate goes not only Republican, but more Conservative, and the Romster has the opportunity to appoint as many as 4 Justices, yeah, we could see Roe, if not overturned, then severely gutted.
Social issues aren't winning for the Demos the way they used to.
Abortions for some, tiny American flags for others!
Romney's troubling statements are that he would sign a bill as President banning abortion. Putting aside whether he's just pandering, does Romney believe that Congress has the power to outlaw abortion in the states? If so, under what power? The commerce clause as supported by the necessary and proper clause? The power under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment?
Justice Scalia has stated that Congress doesn't have power to outlaw abortion in the states and neither the state nor federal government can prohibit any woman from travelling interstate to have an abortion.
So Romney had better appoint some Scalias
jr565 wrote:The first amendment is in the constitution, and is an absolute, stated right. And yet we have various fun restrictions. In fact Obama tried to bar guns outright in DC.
Whoopsies, that should say "second amendment" and "fun" should say "gun".
mccullough:
Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. Specifically:
nor shall any state deprive any person of life ... without due process of law
The applicability of this clause depends on the definition of "person". The claim by pro-life people is that person may be defined from conception (i.e. biological development) and certainly from the time when consciousness can be reasonably ascertained (e.g. brain activity).
"I explain why the answer is probably no, and that if it were yes, it would hurt the GOP"
The answer is yes, because Roe v. Wade is a Constitutional abomination. Will it hurt the Republicans? That depends on when it's done. If it happens early in year 5 of Mitt's Presidency, and the Republicans in Congress leave it to the states, like they should, then I think it will be the Democrats who get hurt, when none of their hyperventilating comes true.
Looking at the Court right now, I just don't see it. Maybe with a couple of more conservatives, but not right now. About the only Justice who I can see voting to scrap Roe v. Wade completely is Thomas. Certainly not the Chief Justice, even if he weren't trying to pander to the liberal establishment. He is too worried about the standing of the Court (and, part of his job is to do so), which translates into their actual power.
Keep in mind that the Supreme Court's power is a soft type of power that it took upon itself some 200 years ago in Marbury v. Madison. Their power is based on public acceptance of their role and authority. And, a lot of that is based on their appearance of following stare decisis. They go to great lengths to not directly overrule themselves, but, rather, over a period of time changing direction by reinterpreting their former precedents, often finding narrow exceptions, and then broadening them until they swallow the original rule.
I think that they could allow the states to limit 3rd term abortions, and ban the killing of aborted babies born alive (which Obama repeatedly voted against while in the Ill. Legislature). And, maybe move a bit into 2nd term abortions. But, that is as far as I see them going.
Of course, maybe I am being a bit prejudiced, because that is where I stand, and where polls seem to find a majority of Americans - 1st term is controlled by the woman, and 3rd term is very iffy, with 2nd somewhere between.
Our hostess wrote, "I don't expect them [potential Romney SCOTUS appointees] to be such staunch conservatives."
That may be. But if it turns out to be -- if he "pulls a Souter" -- Romney would thereby ensure a primary opponent in 2016. The challenge might fail, but it would come, and I think Romney knows that. If he doesn't, he need look no farther than the parable of George H.W. "Read My Lips" Bush. You know: The Bush who only served one term.
He will look for someone as confirmable as John Roberts, but with the judicial philosophy of a Thomas if one's to be found, or a Scalia if that has to make do. Not a Kennedy, and definitely not a Souter, Stevens, or Warren.
He might try to get away with an O'Connor type. But as the withdrawn Miers nomination showed, blank slates aren't acceptable for GOP SCOTUS nominees after Souter.
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