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STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD
Posted on 09/22/2002 4:24:36 PM PDT by madprof98
There's the probability of war in Iraq. Public education is wrestling with failure. Government spending, especially at the state and federal levels, is once again veering out of control. And vigilance is required, lest Congress snatch back the little tax relief it has "temporarily" granted.
Terrorism. The economy. Homeland security. All require our attention.
But on the right and left of the Republican and the Democratic parties, nothing is more riveting, more compelling, more consuming, than abortion.
In Georgia, right-to-lifers apply a litmus test to Republicans that virtually guarantees complying candidates will lose in the general election.
On the national level, special-interest groups such as the National Abortion Rights Action League have taken the Democratic Party hostage, virtually guaranteeing that access to the federal judiciary will be denied to those who fail the litmus test compliant Democrats allow them to impose.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, for example, is a national institution on loan to single-issue ideologues. The 10 Democrats who control the committee vote as one in rejecting judicial candidates who are not blindly obedient to the agenda of out-of-the-mainstream special-interest groups.
Democrats, like Republicans, have a serious internal problem with abortion ideologues. In Georgia, right-to-lifers insisted that candidates it endorsed swear to a single exception: life of the mother.
Reasonable people, including conservatives who generally side with them, agree that women who were violated should not be forced to bear the eternal reminder of their victimization. The real threat to the values right-to-lifers hold is not the rape-and-incest loophole, anyway. It's "health" of the mother, an exception that eviscerates any proposed limitations. So in actual and political terms, right-to-lifers in Georgia are fighting the wrong battle, which is their prerogative.
Both parties, frankly, need some spine in dealing with abortion fanatics. In the U.S. Senate, the nomination of a superbly qualified jurist, Priscilla Owen, a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, was defeated 10-9 by the single-agenda extremists.
The only basis for opposing her was that in interpreting a vague law passed by the Texas Legislature on parental notification, she had given hint that she was not rigidly attuned to pro-choice religion.
Judiciary Committee Democrats were therefore instructed to deny her access to the full Senate, where her nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would have been approved.
A replay occurred last week involving law professor Michael McConnell of Utah, a nominee to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. McConnell, 47, is considered by his peers to be a brilliant legal thinker.
Despite conservative views on abortion, he told the committee, which has yet to vote, "I will conscientiously enforce the law, including laws and precedents I don't agree with," specifically agreeing to uphold Roe v. Wade.
In his view, though, "If the courts would get out of the business of regulating abortion, most legislatures would pass laws reflecting the moderate views of the great majority."
So we have zealots on the right convinced that the tiniest exception will start the hordes marching to abortion clinics and zealots on the left convinced that anybody who disagrees with them should be trashed, lest Roe v. Wade be compromised. Fanatics the both.
And all the while deserving judicial nominees and the "moderate views of the great majority" are kept hostage.
Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
Nice choice of words....paging Dr. Freud!!
Regards....
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