Dems, Abortion Politics, and the Alito nomination

Well, I would have said it would be hard for Washtington, D.C., to offer up lunacy in excess of what we've already seen this year, but lo! along comes Democratic Senator Reid to disprove that.

Sen. Reid, Democrat Minority Leader of the Senate, says he has "concerns" about Supreme Court Nominee Alito, concerns rooted in a writing of Alito's from 1985 in which he expressed the idea that the right to abortion "is nowhere found in the Constitution". The Democrat line is that such a statement is enough to make one "a zealot", "likely to roll back our civil and abortion rights", "extreme", and also therefore likely to overturn Roe V. Wade.

Hm. Let me roll the clock back to the 1980s. What do Dick Durbin and Al Gore, among many, many other Democrats, have in common in the early part of the 1980s? They were, by their own words, pro-Life and against abortion and against Roe vs Wade. They didn't have their big epiphanies (read: realising that being pro Roe v. Wade, pro-Choice, would be better for a politician in the Democratic party) until during the 1980s and into the late 1980s. Hm. Wouldn't that, according to Harry Reid's standard, make Al Gore and Dick Durbin (Senator, Illinois, Democrat) "extreme", "likely to roll back our civil and abortion rights"? It would, if Senator Reid were interested in applying his standards honestly. Of course, Senator Reid is counting on the bulk of the people to not be aware of these little things we call Facts (that Al Gore was pro-life in his early political career and changed course only well into the 1980s, for instance). He's counting on playing his little criticism and expecting people to just nod and go "yup".

Here's the fallacy: no writings have come up from the intervening twenty years (since 1985) that would indicate that Alito would vote that way. We do have the sheer tonnage of Judge Alito's decades on the bench and all his rulings to look at --but if we do that honestly and fairly, you won't find any indication that he'd overturn Roe v. Wade. In fact, you'd find rulings that respect Precedent (we can argue over whether respecting Precedent is a good thing or a bad thing, or a bad thing when done blindly and without thought, later), which would incline him toward NOT voting to overturn Roe v. Wade.

But again, Senator Reid and his ilk don't want you to think for yourself or bother yourself with little nasty things like facts, or realising that, by the standard he offers up to criticise Alito, he would have to also then criticise, in the same words, folks like Al Gore, Dick Durbin, and many other once-Pro-Life Democrats who became Pro-Choice only later in their political lives.

Final word: it would be nice if the American Press were doing its job and pointing out when this sort of blatant hypocricy and extraordinarily dishonest reasoning was offered up. There are some good folks out there who do try to hold people to standards, or at least to point out that they should be applying their own standards fairly and against all those who don't match up; but the vast reaches of the mass media aren't bothering to do that anymore.

Instead, we get "the war was for oil" (if it was for oil, we'd have record-low gas prices, not the contrary; we'd have rebuilt the Iraqi oil industry quickly and turned up the tap, which we didn't do; etc.; the statement is so shorn of inherent logic as to be nonsensical, but it's passed on by the bulk of the media as though it were Written Fact.) and other nonsense that doesn't even hold up to its own inherent logic. We get Mary Mapes, who still doesn't understand that reporters aren't supposed to reach conclusions that are CONTRARY to the facts they uncover.

So, to Harry Reid: grow up. Apply your words and standards, as you should if you actually believe what you're saying, to everyone equally. And start criticising Al Gore, Dick Durbin, and the other Democrats who were pro-life at one time each and every time you criticise Alito and imply that people can't "grow" or "change" in the space of 20 years. (oops, I forgot: for Democrats, you're only allowed to change or nuance your opinions if you're a Democrat; and we aren't to look at a person's past when considering them for public office (so we heard about Bill Clinton), unless that person's a Republican, in which case it's fair game to go back forty and fifty years).

What a pathetic way to behave. And what a terrible thing that too many Americans just swallow this spewage and nod and applaud.

Oops, forgot one more thing (how very Columbo-like!): perfectly intelligent human beings can argue, quite persuasively, that there is no guarantee to protect Abortion (in Democrat's terms) in the Constitution, and that therefore overturning Roe V Wade would be the constitutional thing to do. And those same human beings may actually SUPPORT the concept of "abortion rights", but find supporting something that isn't constitutional inherently wrong. And, to go one more step, they might also then argue that the states would immediately pass laws protecting (or not) those rights, according to the belief of their citizens. Strange how that sounds -- like the way the U.S. Constitution was written to work. Hm...