Posted on 10/31/2005 10:18:38 AM PST by freedomdefender
When Harriet Miers’ nomination was first announced, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley called her an “amazingly bad choice.” This morning, he weighed in Samuel Alito:
JONATHAN TURLEY: He’s the top choice for particularly pro-life people. Sam Alito is viewed as someone who is likely to join the hard right in likely narrowing Roe and possibly voting to overturn Roe.
KATIE COURIC: So he is a strict constructionist in every since of the word? I know President Bush is looking for a conservative jurist, so he fits the bill in terms of someone who will interpret the Constitution literally and may disagree with the right to privacy, which is the foundation of Roe v. Wade?
TURLEY: Oh absolutely. There will be no one to the right of Sam Alito on this Court. This is a pretty hardcore fellow on abortion issues.
COURIC: Not even Antonin Scalia?
TURLEY: They’ll have to make a race to the right, but I think it will be by a nose, if at all. …
COURIC: And ideology trumped gender in this case, right?
TURLEY: I think so. I think the president wanted, first of all, to show he could pick someone who was clearly qualified and has the resume, but he also wanted to rally his base. He’s done both with Sam Alito. No one on the conservative base can be unhappy with Sam Alito. The question is whether they can weather this storm that will be coming, I think, and whether there will be a filibuster.
Works for me.........my kinda guy.
"By a nose".......IZZAT an Italian joke?.............
The Rats have been bluffing all along. There will either be no filibuster or a token one that gets broken quickly. The reason for all the huffing and puffing and threatening from the Rats was to intimidate the President into nominating someone weak and squishy. It was a bluff, and with Alito the President has called their bluff.
Well now we know how the doom and gloomers are taking this news. Nice way to spin out of a potentially great news day.
Turley and al-Khouriq?
Ideology over substance.
They got their Ruth, we got our Sam.
As usual, you're the voice of pessimism. You've never heard good news in your life.
Of course the right to privacy is in the Constitution - it's right there in Amendments IX and X. The right to privacy will never be overturned. What will change is the recognition that the developing baby has a right to privacy also.
Dear Kattie:
How else should someone read the constitution other than 'Literally'.
Would you like a person that says its an alegory?
Maybe qualfifcations trumped it as well, Katie.
This notion that there are not seats on the court 'reserved' for certain types of people is false and dangerous.
Would Katie agree that 'Thomas's' seat was reserved for another black conservative when he goes? I think not.
JRB would have been easier to get through, though I pray Alito is confirmed.
Perhaps you are unaware of the 9th amendment. Hard to imagine what an unenumerated right would look like, if not the right of privacy against the government. It's what underlies the right against unreasonable search and seizure.
I agree that Roe v. Wade is bad law, and should be overturned. What makes it particularly egregious is that SCOTUS used the right to privacy as grounds for their decision.
In fact, the right to privacy -- which does exist and must be recognized by government in a free socisty -- is completely irrelevant to the abortion question.
It chills my blood to hear so many conservatives willing to trash our privacy rights, and to take the indefensible position that the only rights we have are the ones enumerated in the Consitution.
I guess Turley doesn't lurk around here much. We have a whole contingent of Fundamentalist identity politics people who would have taken a Fundamentalist moderate with a crappy resume over a Catholic conservative with a great resume.
I second that emotion
Good news is the pick.... Now the hard part is getting him confirmed and that last I knew that would be up to Senator Frist. Perhaps that has changed?
Scalia to Turley: Come again? Watch your mouth nerdy boy...
The only value information Katie can impart to conservatives is by WHAT SHE HATES! Judging by this excahange, the leftist MSM's hate campaign will immediately engage at full strength. Bush has done it right this time, let's see if the Republicans in the Senate can measure up.
Didn't Katie get the memo? There is NO such thing as a "strict constructionist." There are only right-wing activists... Anyone who can't imagine the "penumbras and emenations" in the Constitution must be a right-wing activist...
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