Posted on 01/07/2005 1:54:11 PM PST by Ed Current
President Bush announced that he has appointed Claude Allen, who served as an aide to former Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, to be his new domestic policy advisor. Allen, whose appointment to the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals was twice blocked by Democratic filibusters, is the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services where he has served since 2001.
Allen is a staunch opponent of abortion rights. As Virginia’s top health administrator, Allen helped draft the state’s parental notification law and supported a law imposing a 24 hour waiting period and requiring biased information be given to women seeking abortions. In his most recent position at HHS, Allen supported expanding the federal CHIP program to cover fetuses (but not pregnant women) and backed the Bush Administration's decision to remove information about condom effectiveness and teen pregnancy prevention from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website.
During Helms’ 1984 reelection campaign, the Los Angeles Times reports that Allen accused Helms’ opponent James Hunt, who was serving at the time as the Governor of North Carolina, of having ties to "radical feminists" and "queers," as well as socialists and labor unions. Allen later said he was not referring to gay people, rather Hunt’s "odd" campaign staff.
"As noted before, the Supreme Court did not invent abortion. There might be plenty of abortion, perhaps authorized or permitted by state laws, even without Roe and Casey. Moreover, the Court is, arguably, not directly responsible for the wrong moral choices of individuals that the Court's decisions permit. Finally, the Court is not responsible - cannot be responsible, consistent with its constitutional role - for correcting all injustices, even grave ones. But the Court is responsible for the injustices that it inflicts on society that are not consistent with, but in fact betray, its constitutional responsibilities. To the extent that the Court has invalidated essentially all legal restriction of abortion, it has authorized private violence on a scale, and of a kind, that unavoidably evokes the memories of American slavery and of the Nazi Holocaust. And by cloaking that authorization in the forms of the law - in the name of the Supreme Law of the Land - the Court has taught the American people that such private violence is a right and, by clear implication, that it is alright. Go ahead. The Constitution is on your side. This is among your most cherished constitutional freedoms. Nobody ought to oppose you in your action. We have said so.
The decision in Casey, reaffirming Roe and itself reaffirmed and extended in Carhart, in my view exposes the Supreme Court, as currently constituted, as a lawless, rogue institution capable of the most monstrous of injustices in the name of law, with a smugness and arrogance worthy of the worst totalitarian dictatorships of all time. The Court, as it stands today, has, with its abortion decisions, forfeited its legal and moral legitimacy as an institution. It has forfeited its claimed authority to speak for the Constitution. It has forfeited its entitlement to have its decisions respected, and followed, by the other branches of government, by the states, and by the People. The enthusiasm of liberal intelligentsia for the Court's abortion decisions, the sycophancy of the law professorate, of the legal profession, and of our elected officials, and the docility of the American people with respect to our lawless, authoritarian Court rivals the pliancy of the most cowardly, servile peoples toward ruinous, brutal, anti-democratic regimes throughout world history. We suffer people to commit despicable acts of private violence and we welcome - some of us revere - a regime that destroys popular government for the sake of perverted, Orwellian notions of "liberty." After a twentieth century that saw some of the worst barbarisms and atrocities ever committed by humankind, at a time when humankind supposedly had progressed to more enlightened states, we still have not learned. The lesson of the Holocaust - "Never Forget" - is lost. We fail to recognize the amazing capacity of human beings to commit unthinkable, barbaric evil, and of others to tolerate it. We remember and are aghast at the atrocities of others, committed in the past, or in distant lands today. But we do not even recognize the similar atrocities that we ourselves commit, and tolerate, today."Michael Stokes Paulsen, The Worst Constitutional Decision of All Time, 78 Notre Dame L. Rev. 995, 1003-1007 (2003).
Well, if he enrages the "feminists", he is obviously the right choice.
Abortion rights?
First of all, the left usually calls it "Women's rights." And an GIRL under 18 is NOT an adult woman. So a "woman's right" to an abortion does NOT apply to her.
How could anyone ever object to parental notification? Parents have a right to know what their children are doing.
Here in NY, you don't even need parental notification for an abortion. A girl could be 12 and get an abortion.
Try being a 16 and attempting to buy cigarettes with the whole "It's my body" line, It doesn't work (I've tried it).
Yeehaw!
Another minority appointed to a high level official by Bush but ignored by the MSM.
Can we get some retroactive abortions scheduled?
Baby BUMP!
Well, if he enrages the "feminists", he is obviously the right choice."
Hear, hear.
well they don't consider the fetus/baby to be a "person" because it's mental life is nonexistent or not as developed as an adult's. As the brilliant intellectuals in my philosophy dept would put it, a fetus is not a "normative agent." Of course this definition of "person" is just as arbitrary as anything, but hey when you're in power and your ability to whore around is on the line, you get to be as arbitrary as you want!
The murderer on death row, however, meets the liberal criteria of personhood.
Sounds like Bush actually appointed someone with a full set of ballz.
It would be nice if whites were also eligible for these occasional "conservative slots," but I'll take it.
Good luck to the guy. He'll probably need it.
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