Posted on 08/13/2005 7:39:47 PM PDT by neverdem
Under pressure, Naral Pro-Choice America has withdrawn a cheesy 30-second TV spot unfairly linking Judge John Roberts Jr. with abortion clinic violence. But the episode's sour taste lingers, and it can only make it harder to get senators to pay proper attention during the Supreme Court confirmation process to legitimate concerns about Judge Roberts's approach to issues of personal privacy and reproductive freedom.
The advertisement in question focused on an argument that Mr. Roberts made to the Supreme Court in an abortion-related case in the early 1990's, when he was the principal deputy solicitor general in the administration of the first President George Bush. At issue was whether a Reconstruction-era civil rights law originally intended to protect freed slaves from the Ku Klux Klan could be invoked by federal courts to support injunctions against the increasingly frequent and violent demonstrations being staged to block access to abortion clinics.
Mr. Roberts and other administration lawyers argued that the statute did not apply to the clinic protests. It was a tenable if unduly cramped reading of the law, shared by a 6-to-3 majority of the Supreme Court, that the media geniuses at Naral took as license to try to tar Judge Roberts as a defender of clinic violence. "America can't afford a justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans," the announcer intones at the ad's close, ignoring, among other things, Mr. Roberts's statement during oral arguments that the administration was not trying to defend the demonstrators' conduct, which he noted was illegal under state law.
In withdrawing the ad, Naral's president, Nancy Keenan, said that the controversy sparked by the ad had "become a distraction" from the group's effort to educate the public. Lamentably, her statement stopped short of apologizing to Judge Roberts, and to Americans of all...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Once NARAL withdrew the ad then it became easy for the Slimes to denounce it. That way they think they have bought themselves credibility on the issue of Roberts.
Yeah, sure.
translation: " YOU IDIOTS!!!! We were going to attack him like that in a more subtle way. you ruined it!!!"
IOW, as long as we don't educate the American public about the nature of abortion, education is a fine thng.
Our big liberal newspaper in West Virginia today condemned the ad big time. They cited three pretty blatant lies in the commercial.
If even THESE pinkos are up in arms about it, then NARAL really screwed the pooch.
It's just a pile-on. After NARAL's HMFIC resigned it was open season. The new honcho can come on, announce a "New and Improved" NARAL to the applause of lib'rals everywhere, yet it's SOSDD.
The WV Gazette & Mail???!!! Their editor has got to be one of the most rabid libs on the planet. If he were in Madison, WI, he'd be a "radical".
Because .. as usual .. the democrats overplay their hand.
"NARAL taken to the woodshed by the NY Times Editorial Board. Who'da thunk it?"
LOL, I can't believe they called the ad "cheesy"!
Can we like, someday! have some elected representatives who do not have trouble "paying attention"?
Like maybe, someone(s) with enough courage to take a stance on principle? (instead of checking which way the PC wind blows every time they have to....GASP! SUPPORT American ideals of freedom, liberty, justice, the 'rule of law'....yeah, stuff like that....
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