Apparently, no one has informed the dems yet that this is an appointment for life and that any answers he gives to their “tough questions” mean bupkes.

Lee wrote:

They have promised, however, to “ask him some tough questions.” Like what?

[MST3K] “How do poptarts work ?[/MST3k]

Part of any political action is testing your allies and enemies to see how they react. Bush nominates a conservative for the Supreme Court, and the Democrats folded like soggy cardboard. Bush, perhaps the most unpopular US president in our lifetimes, is still getting away with whatever he wants without a hint of opposition from the official opposition party.

You don’t win by surrendering.

I’m hardly one of NARAL’s fans–witness the ridiculous shilling for the DP despite party members approving Scalia’s confirmation and the Hyde Amendment–but the level of concertation over this ad is laughable considering the shit Karl Rove has pulled. Calling the ad depraved is over-the-top, to say the least. What’s depraved is likening girls and women who get abortions to Nazis, bombing clinics, smirking at your surviving victims a la Eric Rudolph, and killing doctors.

Then again, I’ve never liked the show very much, finding the smirky frat-boy attitude annoying even when it used on targets that I agreed deserved it. To each their own.

Is Roberts conservative? Of course he is. He is being nominated by a Republican president who won by 3 million votes and he is going to be approved by a Congress controlled by Republicans and conservative. Were you expecting Bush would nominate and ACLU lawyer????

Roberts just happened to consistently take on cases where he backed policies of the extreme right. He just happened to take up the option of submitting an amicus brief on the behalf of rightwing bigots. He just happens to be Bush’s nominee for the Supreme Court, after a career in which he just happened to oppose abortion rights over and over again.

When you have a fundamentally oppressive social structure, you can advance the cause of oppression by simply following the rules.

It’s not my problem if you find my comments to be “flailing.” I like them just fine, and I like southern’s comments just fine, too.

I never said either of you were un-entitled to your opinions. You are not entitled to have them unquestioned, however. That’s a whole other thing.

P.S.– I wonder if you’d so firmly justify Jon Stewart’s frat-boyism if it had been directed against gays, instead of hetero women.

Roberts was not defending the protesters or bombers. He was defending the poposition that Bray would violate the free-speech rights of protesters and that protesting at an abortion clinic is not the same as gender discrimination. We can agree or disagree on whether that was a good ruling, but it was a reasonable legal position to take and–as a First Amendment absolutist–consistent with the idea of government placing unreasonable restrictions on free speech, which includes political protests.

Instead of flaling around and being angry at mythago and me, how about recognizing that it is possible to have reasonable, viable legal positions that differ from yours.

But it’s not the first time you’ve deliberately distorted what I’ve written so you don’t have to address my points, so please, carry on. >:

Thanks for reminding me of one point I previously forgot, though. For years, NARAL has used dirty tactics against leftists who have abandoned the Democratic Party and openly supported other candidates. They have also –like most liberals– dragged out the Supreme Court year after year in order to terrify other potential pro-choice bailers. Yet they have cheerily ignored and glossed over the fact that we’re in the mess we’re in because the Democratic Party’s stalwarts have waved through Right-winger after Right-winger gunning to get on the SC. Every sign points towards this happening again,with at least some liberal blogs calling for another wave-through for Roberts because “we” must “save our strength” for the bigger battles– because it’s much easier to bail out a boat that’s seven-eighths full instead of three-quarters full, I suppose. Yeesh.

NARAL has played dirty pool against the small, the low-in-clout, the poorly organized, and the poorly funded on the Democrats’ left flank since at least the 2000 election, Mythago. Most liberals didn’t have a problem with that, but let NARAL turn even a fraction of that against a foe the Democrats’ own size, and suddenly liberals are screaming and howling and calling foul.

Give me a fucking break.

The NARAL ad referred to Roberts’ actions in helping draft an amicus brief in the Bush administration in 1991 in support of a very extreme collection of anti-choice extremists/terrorists. The case dealt with the applicability of the Klu Klux Klan act in cases involving intimidation and blockades of health care clinics targeted by OR and similar groups. I can understand how a law student, regardless of their position on abortion rights, might argue both sides while in school. I can understand how a responsible attorney out in practice might choose to represent an anti-choice extremist group like Operation Rescue, or the KKK for that matter. But if an attorney argues for the defense of a violent extremist group, be it the parties on the Bray side in this case or a similar argument which in another generation might have been made by the KKK (perhaps a constitutional right to burn crosses, or more specifically how close can one be permitted to burn one near the target of their protest) … well, I think that attorney’s arguments and personal opinions deserve strict scrutiny, to say the least. Especially if they’ve been nominated to a seat on the US Supreme Court. Especially.

You wrote:

Even in today’s cynical society there are some things that are beyond the pale..not to mention the political disadvantage at which NARAL’s ad put the more polished advocates of their cause in Congress (but that is a whole ‘nother discussion).

Yes, the nomination of a man like Roberts –who, along with his highly dubious opinions on choice, has plenty of other problems– isn’t “beyond the pale” at all. An ad that uses tactics you find distasteful to find out what anyone with eyes can see– that he is an out-and-out foe of women’s rights– is a sign of the end times. Yawn. I can’t help but think that when people write the kind of stuff you write about supposed “moderates,” they are writing about people who never intended to give groups like NARAL a fair shake in the first place. Nothing NARAL said short of “Go, Roberts !” would have pleased them. What pleases them is all of us going quietly with the flow, never mind that the flow is headed over Niagra Falls, *sans* barrell.

The more I listen to these discussions about how the 21st-Century version of The Silent Majority must be catered and kowtowed to with every breath activists take, the more I’m convinced that the term “moderate,” as with Goldsmith’s comments about “liberal” and so forth, is also likewise meaningless. These “moderates” we’re all supposed to cater to simply want to avoid the fray and sit on the fence forever. They have a notion that their own choices vis-a-vis childbearing and bodily integrity can be safely kept private, if not legal, so why get involved ? The hell with everyone else.

You go cater to those people, Mythago, Dispassionate. I’m tired of them. They’re a millstone around the country’s neck, and I wish I could think of some way to convince them that there’s more to citizenship than being a millstone.

It does not strain credibility at all to consider Roberts supportive of extreme tactics against clinics and the women who need them. You want to argue with the way NARAL phrased it, be my guest, but at the core they are correct.

FYI: The above referenced link includes a chart which shows that, while non-violent picketing (Constitutionally protected as a freedom of expression of dissent) has significantly increased, various forms of actual violence at abortion clinics has dramatically decreased since 2000 .

If you want to engage in some superficial linking or faulty analogizing to attempt to discredit a public figure, play with these stats:

During Clinton’s first administration, and despite the passing of FACE (1994) and the use of RICO to protect access, there were some 60 arson/bomb attacks or attempted arson/bomb attacks on abortion clinics ,(and the numbers were not really better during his 2nd term either).

During Bush’s first administration there were some 16 arson/ bomb attacks or attempted arson/bomb on abortion clinics (roughly 1/4 the number).

As a matter of fact such figures would imply a trend toward safer access during Bush’s tenure than Clinton’s. As a matter of speculation one could take such numbers at their face value and attribute the trend to Bush’s leadership. Of course, it goes without saying that there had to have been more complex dynamics in that trend than simply who was President at the time. And my point is : Do people at NARAL believe the American public would be stupid enough to buy off on superficial linking or faulty analogizing that John Roberts is some kind of anarchist and would not recognize a vicious smear campaign?

The vast majority of pro-life clinic protestors are not violent and emulate tactics of the late Dr. King when protesting what they believe is a bad law that effectively deprives an entire class of citizens (the unborn) of all of its civil rights.

Historically, clinic bombers have been individuals acting either alone or in cahoots with a very small group of fanatics who resort to violence. To try to portray John Roberts as supportive of such a lunatic fringe strains credulity.

Naral screwed the pooch. It came across as “McCarthyizing” a distinguished jurist (conservatism notwithstanding) and the tactic jumped up and bit them on the butt. To put it in the vernacular, “Anyone who slings enough shit will eventually get it all over himself.”

In this particular instance, no one is going to be able to launch a defense of NARAL which a majority of Americans will find credible or palatable. Talk about throwing away the moral high ground with both hands. Even in today’s cynical society there are some things that are beyond the pale..not to mention the political disadvantage at which NARAL’s ad put the more polished advocates of their cause in Congress (but that is a whole ‘nother discussion).

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug05/Goldsmith0810.htm

Thanks for clearing that up, res. With allies like you, I have no doubt that my reproductive freedom will remain secure for all time. [rolleyes]

Maybe you should go re-read the second two paragraphs of what southern wrote. I thought that they were very eloquent. Oh, and here’s a little something more for you, courtesy Patricia Goldsmith at Dissident Voice:

(bolds are mine)

Democrats seem only to believe in means — policies, tactics, rules. This would include the Democratic Leadership Council’s fixation on triangulation; only last week Al From insisted that there has never been a liberal majority in this country.

Delicacy prevented him from adding the understood “and there never will be.” The problem is, the words liberal and conservative no longer have any intelligible meaning whatsoever, just as the concept of compromise no longer has any meaning. If liberals are those who believe in means, above all — and there is no shame in it; democracy is, after all, a process, and progressives know you have to start wherever you are — we are in big trouble right now. Because a rule-based attitude will not work against a powerful, wealthy movement that firmly believes that the ends justify the means…

Which is just a polite way of saying that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have found a way to blame 9/11 on the pagans and the abortionists and the gays and the lesbians. The marriage amendments, brilliantly, put whole electorates into an us-versus-them position, simply by virtue of the fact that Republican legislatures across the country, acting in lock-step, passed the initiatives to be put on ballots. The initiatives were presented to the electorate as purely symbolic, but immediately afterward Republican attorneys-general moved, again in lock-step, to use these initiatives to roll back decades of rights, and not just for gay people. The very act of taking away basic rights implicates all those who voted for the initiatives, conditioning and desensitizing them to the harm that is being done. That’s a lot of people who’ve already taken one step in a very bad direction.

What we are fighting here is fundamentalist religion. In political terms, religion is an emotion, an authentic, deep emotion. You cannot fight it with “rational” belief systems, science or fact, which is one reason why Republicans have become the anti-science party. Under the tutelage of Bill Kristol, conservatives re-framed creationism and made it something called Intelligent Design. They have done nothing less than reverse the Scopes trial defeat of 80 years ago. They’re re-writing history, and this time the Bible wins! George Bush went on the campaign trail to spread the good news right before he went on his five-week summer vacation.

You certainly cannot fight this with policy. The only way the left can fight this emerging proto-fascist theocracy is with emotion. Real emotion…

The ad was a bad decision and hurt the reputation of NARAL and the abortion-rights movement, making them look like amateurs and not quite ready for prime time. I know you aren’t willing to admit it was a mistake and a distortion, but the CV wisdom has already reached that conclusion.