"If I believed he was going to go in there and overthrow Roe ... most likely 'yes,'" — Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, when asked on "Fox News Sunday" whether she would filibuster Sam Alito's nomination to the US Supreme Court.
And I thought it Roe v. Wade was just a court case. Turns out it was a coup d'etat!
Why else would we have to "overthrow" an opinion upheld by a handful of unelected judges in Washington DC. Couldn't we just get new judges and, with them, a new opinion? Or maybe just pass a new law?
Not a chance. Roe v. Wade is the king of all courtrooms, the lord of litigation, the alpha and omega of American democracy. Dissent is not allowed.
I may be alone on this, but the whole situation strikes me as, well, odd. Here is Judge Sam Alito, legal super-genius with 15 years experience on the appeals court, an impeccable resume and the highest possible rating from the American Bar Association…and his appointment to the US Supreme Court rests entirely on his position regarding the regulation of one relatively minor medical procedure.
Why not pick judges based on their personal hygiene, or their support for the state regulation of chiropractors?
When picking a Supreme Court judge, there are three simple questions to be answered: Qualified? Competent? Kook? And since everyone to the right of Cindy Sheehan — that is, all sane people — answer those questions "yes, yes and no" with regard to Judge Alito, these ought to be the quickest and least contentious US Senate hearings since the debate of the "Smoking Hot Senate Intern Employment Act of 1993."
Alas, no. It's going to be a stupid, silly, irrational fact-free fight, all because of Roe.
Which brings to oddity number two: Sam Alito is never going to ban abortion. Ever.
I know, I know: You've seen the coverage on CNN. You've read the New York Times editorial page insisting that a Supreme Court Alito could "vote to make abortion illegal — which it appears he might well do." It's all bunk.
Wait — I take it back. If the citizens of America ever get back their power to decide what abortion laws they want in their states (a right stripped from them by the Supreme Court in you-know-who vs. you-know whom) Judge Alito might, as a registered voter in New Jersey, cast a vote for a legislator who pledges to ban all legal abortions.
But that's as close as he's ever going to get. Because despite all the idiocy pouring out of your TV screen and leaping from your newspaper every morning on this subject, the same stubborn fact remains:
THE SUPREME COURT CANNOT BAN ABORTION! IT CAN'T IT CAN'T IT CAN'T! WOULD YOU NEWSROOM IDIOTS PLEASE PULL YOUR HEADS OUT AND STOP GETTING THIS STORY WRONG! AAARRRGGGGHHHH!!
There. I feel better.
Even if we assume that Kennedy, Schumer and the other senate schmucks are right and Sam Alito actually is a closet Nazi who supports mandatory strip searches for all 10-year-old girls trying to check Judy Blume books out of the public library without permission from the NSA — he STILL won't be able to ban abortion, or birth control, or premarital sex or even public school showings of Brokeback Mountain.
The most Alito could possibly accomplish for his secret handlers in the American Fascist Party would be to allow us, the citizens and taxpayers, to decide how much regulation of abortion we want.
Which brings up blatant, obvious point number three that the Senate Judiciary Committee will completely miss: If the right to an abortion is so amazingly important, so powerfully profound that we have to warp our entire judicial system in its service, then why don't Sen. Feinstein and her friends simply put it into the Constitution? Wouldn't that be a lot easier then going through this nonsense every time the Supreme Court convenes?
This obsession with the courts reveals the legal fallacy behind Roe v. Waders demands for Supreme Court judges who promise "protect a woman's right to choose." Gee, that's funny. Nobody's asking these judges to protect my right to own a gun; or the right to complain publicly about the war in Iraq; or a woman's right to vote. Perhaps that's because these rights are actually found in the Constitution.
By insisting that Alito swear allegiance, not to the rule of law, but to the rule of Roe, abortion activists are admitting that the right does not exist. If it did, then Sam Alito — Mr. "By The Book" — would be a shoo-in for the Supreme Court. The problem with Alito isn't that he'll get the law wrong. No, his opponents fear that he'll commit the treasonable offense of getting it right, of applying the Constitution as it is actually written.
So why not just add an amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing the unfettered right to abortion? You know, that whole "democracy, will of the people" thing that used to be so big back in the '60s? Isn't that something the "Democratic" Party could get behind?
Uh….no. Letting the people decide abortion laws for themselves would "overthrow" the all-powerful Roe, and we certainly can't have that, now can we?
What — you thought you lived in a democracy? No way.
It's Roe's world, and we're just living in it.
