Courts provide Obama a chance to leave his mark (via AFP)
Ralph Nader, the nation's best-known consumer advocate, launched a website Wednesday to announce a national exploratory committee to test support for a possible fourth run for the presidency. Nader, who has been derided as a spoiler who helped elect George W. Bush in 2000, said he will decide in about a month.I think that we can all assume that the Republican nominee will be John McCain. We can also assume that in spite of the hostility towards McCain the Republicans will get behind him. On the Democratic side there is incredible hostility towards Hillary Clinton. I have made it clear that neither Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would not have been my first choice. But come November a vote not cast for the one who wins the nomination is a vote for the Republican. If you think it wouldn't matter if it was Hillary Clinton or John McCain in the White House just think about the Supreme Court - think about two or even three new Alitos on the Supreme Court replacing two or three solid liberals. Sorry ladies but Roe V Wade is the least of my worries. I'm thinking of an ever powerful unitary executive, the continued loss of rights guaranteed under the constitution, increasing influence of radical Christianity in the government and increasing power of corporations pushing the US closer to the classical definition of fascism - government by and for corporations. Do you still think that Hillary would be no better than John McCain. If so you deserve the tyranny you will get. Unfortunately your children and grandchildren don't deserve it but will get it anyway.
When Sandra Day O’Connor voted to seat the unelected George W Bush I wonder if she realized she would be undoing her own legacy. Well now that the Pope and the tyrannical Catholic Church is fully in charge of the US Supreme Court that's exactly what has happened. As Adam Liptak explains in The New 5-to-4 Supreme Court it goes a lot deeper than abortion and many of the right to life crowd may not like what the new court does. AFTER the 5-to-4 decision last week in which the Supreme Court reversed course on abortion, upholding the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, many court watchers were wondering what to expect next.For it's entire history the church in Rome has been less about the teachings of Christ and spirituality than about political control - a virtual extension of the Roman Empire. Tyrannical Kings maintained their power and feudal lords maintained their wealth with the blessings of the church.
For guidance, law professors and Supreme Court specialists looked to lists of 5-to-4 cases in which Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired last year, had been the swing vote. One list, compiled by Martin S. Lederman at Georgetown University, had 31 entries, with cases on religion and race, elections and crime, medicine and free speech.
Last week’s abortion decision, Gonzales v. Carhart, demonstrated the court’s new math. With the justice who took the O’Connor seat, Samuel A. Alito, in the majority, and the new swing justice, Anthony M. Kennedy, writing the decision, the court upheld, by a single vote, the abortion act.
Just seven years ago, Justice O’Connor voted with the court’s liberals to strike down a similar Nebraska law banning the procedure, known medically as intact dilation and extraction. It involves removing an intact fetus rather than dismembering the fetus in the uterus. The decision recast the court’s approach to abortion, shifting its emphasis toward fetal life and away from deference to medical judgments about women’s health.
The decision last week brought into focus the greatest hopes of conservatives and the worst fears of liberals. Is the court about to make sweeping changes in important areas of constitutional law, including in decisions expected shortly on the role of money in political campaigns and of race in the schools?
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long- awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.While it's true that....
The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.
The opponents of the act "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.
The decision pitted the court's conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority.
It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how—not whether—to perform an abortion.
The law bans a method of ending a pregnancy, rather than limiting when an abortion can be performed.....I think everyone knows that with the Pope in charge of the Supreme Court this is just the beginning.