Posted on 10/17/2005 11:41:08 PM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers told the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday that she believes there's a right to privacy in the Constitution, a basic underpinning of the Supreme Court's landmark abortion ruling Roe v. Wade.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the panel chairman, said that during a nearly two-hour private meeting Monday, Miers also told him that she believed the court had properly decided a precedent-setting 1965 privacy case, Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the legal foundation that led to Roe v. Wade.
Miers also assured a Senate Democrat on Monday that she's never told anyone how she would rule on abortion rights.
"Nobody knows how I would rule on Roe v. Wade," Miers said, according to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Still, Schumer and other Democrats said Monday that they want to know more about a private teleconference call in which two of Miers' friends reportedly assured religious conservatives that she would vote to overturn the 1973 case that legalized abortion.
Schumer said it was possible that the Judiciary Committee would subpoena participants in the call. The key issue: whether the White House engineered a clandestine campaign to assure social conservatives that Miers would oppose abortion, while publicly insisting that it had no abortion litmus test in picking Miers.
Specter said committee staffers are investigating.
"If there was a telephone call where someone gave assurances about how she's going to vote in a case, you bet that's something we'd look into," Specter said. "Absolutely. It is not tolerable to have any commitments about how a nominee would vote on a case. Not tolerable."
"You can't have a campaign for a nominee based on whispers and winks," Schumer said.
Monday's skirmishing was set off by Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund. He described a call among 13 members of "the Arlington Group," which he described as "an umbrella alliance of 60 religious conservative groups," on Oct. 3, the day President Bush nominated Miers.
During the call, James Dobson, founder of the evangelical group Focus on the Family, introduced two friends of Miers to speak about her, according to Fund.
White House political guru "Karl Rove suggested that we talk with these gentlemen because they can confirm specific reasons why Harriet Miers might be a better candidate than some of us think," Dobson said, according to notes cited by Fund as taken during the call by one participant.
One participant asked whether the men thought Miers would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
"Absolutely," said U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade of Texas.
"I agree with that," said Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht, a longtime Miers companion, according to Fund.
The call came one day after Rove spoke at length with Dobson about Miers, assuring the influential conservative that Miers was acceptable. Dobson has said that Rove made no promise about how Miers would vote if confirmed for the court.
The White House said Monday that it didn't set up the second call.
"That was not a call organized by the White House, and as far as I've been able to learn, no one at the White House was involved on that call," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
Miers told Schumer that she'd never discussed Roe v. Wade with Kinkeade or Hecht, Schumer said, but she refused to say whether she had ever discussed the issue with Rove.
Kinkeade declined to comment. In a statement read by his assistant, the judge said he "does not feel it is appropriate to have further discussion about Ms. Miers' nomination in public."
Hecht didn't respond to calls for comment.
Other participants also refused to comment, calling the teleconference a private call.
One social conservative familiar with the call said the two Texas judges were speculating about Miers' likely vote on abortion, not promising it.
"They felt she was pro-life. But they said they did not know for sure," said the conservative, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid rupturing relations with activists on the call.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a Miers ally and a Judiciary Committee member, opposed having the panel spend time examining the conference call. "I think there is going to be plenty of fodder for the committee to deal with without running down rabbit trails," Cornyn said.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, also a Judiciary Committee member, voiced annoyance at some conservative activists' opposition to Miers' nomination.
"What bothers me is that loudmouths two weeks ago were saying that they had this conversation and that conversation. I see most of them wanting to be big shots and ... want to be more than they really are," Grassley said, adding that "religion shouldn't play a role" in choosing a Supreme Court justice.
This circus gets worse every day. What a cluster for conservatives.
One of the first articles I read had Hecht saying that a person could be pro-life and still uphold Roe v. Wade.
I'm not reading anything into these press reports. Let's see what she has to say in her hearing.
BTW, all this article really focuses on is that the decision to let married people use contraception was correct.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Furthermore, it is reinforced;
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
You do understand the ramifications of that (Griswold) case? It set the stage for Roe - finding of a protected right to privacy, which was extended to a right to abortion on demand in Roe. Griswold is the case with penumbras and emanations.
Does that seem incredible to you? It does not seem incredible to me.
Depends on how ramifications is defined. The holding of the court is that married people can use contraceptives. Miers agrees with that, and only that, according to this article.
The article doesn't say that she agrees with penumbras and emanations.
I didn't get Con Law until a few weeks before my final, but I aced it.
The optimist in me wants to recognize that Miers was walking a fine line in her comments saying that gays deserve equal rights, but criminalizing sodomy laws equally affects both gays and straights, and that her buddy was walking a similar fine line on her behalf in that early article, to appease the media that began crawling over him.
I believe she's a huge threat to Roe v. Wade. Much bigger than Roberts appeared to be.
Have you read the dissents in Griswold?
What we need are some states to chip away using science and other arguments on life to get abortion down to the first month or two first then move in later on for the final ruling
Neither of the Amendments you posted can be read to reveal this "RIGHT"...
Perhaps you consider it "Natural Law" to partially deliver a near full term child - pierce it's skull and vacuum out the brain...
Semper Fi
Yep. Miers and I both understand holdings vs. opinions.
trust me
I think we may be able to defined it at conception, given current progress in stem cell research.
"Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, also a Judiciary Committee member, voiced annoyance at some conservative activists' opposition to Miers' nomination"
On and on this circus and sideshow continues.
When Bush ran for re-election he promised his supporters he would select justices along the line of a Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia.
Roberts MAY be such a judge.
But this imposter he is attempting to foist upon those who so strongly and loyally supported him in the past is reprehensible.
Look at it this way. The woman is 60 years old, has had no experience in constitutional law and her sole claim to fame is her work for Bush as his legal advisor and the fact that she broke the sex barrier in the Texas legal system.
WHAT, pray Senator Grassley, are her qualifications beyond that?? Your insulting remarks about people who expect a President to adhere to his campaign promises are repellent and a perfect reason why the Republican Party only survives due to the greater ineptitude of its opposition rather than to any other factor.
Who thinks Miers is qualified to sit on the court? Apparently Schumer, Feinstein, and Reid like her. So does that eminent Constitutional scholar Laura Bush, ALBERTO GONZALES, and Carl Rove. Now we learn that the Texas Supreme Court supports her too. Soon she will get the endorsement of Ben and Jerry and Steven Speilberg.
On the other side we have Mark Levin, Bill Kristol, Ann Coulter, Charles Krauthammer and numerous other conservative luminaries of every stripe questioning her qualifications.
Sorry, Grassely. The Supreme Court is not a personal fief of the President's to be used for rewarding personal pals, and conservatives have worked too long and too hard for the opportunity to have a reversal in the disgraceful series of legislative actions by activist courts to accept George Bush's nominee on no greater word than the fact that George Bush likes her and knows her and Laura Bush thinks she's peachy keen.
I can see the way things are going here now. The Repubs in the Senate will back down and rubber stamp this Trojan Horse and the Dems will gleafully support her also. THEY know where she stands on the issues and LIKE it.
As for me, I may be in the market for a new political party - one which supports the vision of men like Scalia, Tancredo, Ronald Reagan and similar minded individuals, and not the views of a northeastern liberal who has learned to walk and talk like a Texan, but sure as heck doesn't think like one - at least with respect to Juridical appointees and the security of our southeren borders.
The Fourth and Fifth Amendments were described in Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 630, as protection against all governmental invasions "of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life." The court had recently referred in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 656, to the Fourth Amendment as creating a "right to privacy, no less important than any other right carefully and particularly reserved to the people." See Beaney, The Constitutional Right to Privacy, 1962 Sup. Ct. Rev. 212; Griswold, The Right to be Let Alone, 55 Nw. U. L. Rev. 216 (1960).
I agree that abortion is an abomination and that Roe v. Wade is bad law, not because of the claim to a right of privacy, but because it does not extend the protections of the constitution to the unborn.
But, you can't point to lines in the Constitution where our founders declared that acts of murder or abortion fell within some stated right to "privacy"...
From the "right" of couples to use contraceptives -- to the "right" to slaughter their near full term child is more that a "great leap" -- it is an abomination and a sin.
Roe v. Wade is a quilt of tissue thin logic, unsupported by the Constitution or the 10 Commandments handed down by the REAL Judge we must all face one day...
Sorry, but I'm not buying the slick lawyer bullsquat that the undeniable right to privacy of a citizen in his home with his spouse, leads to some right to murder children.
In my "private thoughts" I often think the world and my mental health would be a lot better off -- if certain folks died suddenly...
Does the logic follow that my rights extend to committing the necessary murders to find "inner peace" and achieve my Constitutional right to PRIVATE gratification satisfaction?
Or perhaps, since I was once sent to kill strangers that never did me any harm before I invaded their country -- that I should now receive compensatory right to slaughter a few dozen of the assholes in this country that certainly "need killin"? Perhaps we could think of it as some VERY late term abortions....
See how silly things can get, when we try to rationalize murder?
Roe v. wade was bad law, based on a foundation of sand.
If abortion on demand, including late term abortions is to be the "law of the land" --- it would have to based on something a lot more substantial than the Row v. Wade fuzzy reasoning by a small majority of nitwit Justices..
I openly confess my "ignorance" of the law and all its "subtle nuances"..... I also admit, that like many of my brothers --- those of us that survived, came home with a previously unheld and heightened appreciation and reverence for life... I simply can't believe that we have clinics set up to murder children, and parents in many states are not entitled to know their minor daughter has been taken there for an abortion!!
Row v. Wade is precisely why we must place Justices on the SCOTUS -- that are better equipped to interprete our Constitution than those extreme leftist activist Justices of the earlier Court who dropped that steaming turd on the bar....
Semper Fi
I agree, it's very spooky...
If President Bush screws up on this appointment -- THAT will be his legacy and our grief.
Semper Fi
I too want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, but only from within the confines of the constitution. I do not want judges who will impose their brand of morality on me whether they are from the right or the left. Anyone who advocates that judges become activist for their pet causes in not a conservative. If a particular law or decision is not acceptable to me, to you, or the public in general we have, within the constitution, the legislative and amendment process to change it. Anything that one judge can give, another can take away.
Sorry, I'm not trying to be argumentive, and I'm not riled up --- it's just my manner of speech that often is misinterpreted.... I'm a "little gruff", as my sainted wife often reminds me.
I often use the term "you" -- when I mean anyone..or "one".
I'm not arguing with you, but with the false "logic" that got us to where we find ouselves today...
It appears we agree that we both want the Constitution and the means within the Constitution to resolve issues of this importance --- not activist Justices with an agenda.
Thanks for the conversation ---- it's been on of those tough nights to sleep.
Semper Fi
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