Battle May Center on Abortion(Thompson:Roberts positions were as advocate)

[DeepModem Mom]

New York Times/AP:
Battle Over Nominee May Center on Abortion
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 20, 2005
Filed at 10:12 a.m. ET


...Abortion, a polarizing issue for lawmakers, will be the ''hot button'' issue in the confirmation battle, conceded Fred Thompson, the former senator who will shepherd Roberts through the Senate. But Thompson cautioned lawmakers not to read too much into Roberts' seemingly conflicting legal positions on Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

''Many of the positions he's taken are positions he took as an advocate ... representing a client,'' said Thompson, whom Bush has asked to take charge of helping Roberts through the advice-and-consent process....

***

Democrats' concern over Roberts' abortion views stem from two seemingly contradictory positions that Roberts took on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

In a brief that he filed with the Supreme Court while serving as deputy solicitor general in the administration of the first President Bush, Roberts said that Roe v. Wade ''was wrongly decided and should be overruled.'' But he told senators during his 2003 confirmation hearings for his current appellate court post that the decision was ''the settled law of the land.''

Thompson said the administration expected lawmakers to ask tough questions about Roberts' abortion views. But he also said they should distinguish between Roberts' role as a policy advocate as a one-time deputy solicitor general in a Republican administration and his contrasting role as a jurist....


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Bush.html

[TahitiNut]

1. A Deputy Solicitor General represents "The People of The United States of

... America"!! In the brief he filed as a litigant (Rust v. Sullivan), he represented "The People of The United States of America" (who pay his fucking salary!!) in the form of HHS. Roe v. Wade was NOT an issue in that litigation. It was litigated on the basis of the First and Fifth Amendments! Instead of actually representing his clients, he represented a political ideology of the Republican right! Personally, I'm not interested in paying for legal advocacy that's against my interests!

In another case (Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic) wherein he attacked Roe, he filed an amicus brief. He was NOT a litigant representing a client! He was a fucking special interest advocate while taking his fees from The People!

[xxqqqzme]

2. asscrack used that 'law of the land'

line during his confirmation hearings. They're rethugs, Rethugs lie! The end justifies the means w/ rethugs. They cannot be trusted. How many more times does this need 2 B demonstrated B4 it sinks in?

[Peace Patriot]

3. Oh, the corporations love it when we are all fighting about religion!

Before we know it, they will have implants in our children's heads telling them when, what and how much to consume, all tied to a free market database, with us paying for the chips and the brain surgery, and parents being held liable if the surgeon happens to slip a little and cut out a major brain function, because it was the parents who signed the waiver, being that no child without a chip can go to school, and surgeon, hospital, and chipmaker will each get to dock the parents' pittance wages to the end of their lives, for pain and suffering caused to the surgeon, hospital, and corporation, for having been permitted by the parents to engage in behavior that turned a child into vegetable.

Yup, they have big plans for us, friends--big plans--while we argue about whether or not to turn women into chattels again, and some cry "Witch burnings!" and others cry, "Jesus said...!" (...ahem, wasn't Jesus against witchburnings?)--they will loot our parents' pensions and throw them out in the street, and charge them money for their space on the sidewalk; and they will dock your pittance wages for the hours you sleep at night, because that is unproductive time, that is THEIR time that you are wasting, and if you won't take your "up" pill like everybody else, and work 24/7, then you need to be fined in order to scrape a bit more profit off your sorry back and compensate Corporate for your "training"....

And the Supreme Court will not say that this is slavery; they will lean over their high benches, and grin down at you like loons, and charge you a year's wages for their time.

They are going to have a good old time at our expense, yes they are. They are not just going to own you through credit cards and mortgages and pittance wages and no benefits; they are going to own every inch of you down to your DNA; you will be matched and mated according to their idea of a docile, productive worker or quiet cannon fodder, and the diseases they create by this monoculture of humanity will be tested for before you are born and, if you are predisposed to them, it will be charged to your pittance wages throughout your life, and used to cover the costs of offing you and hauling your ashes to Mars when you get sick. (--cuz the world's gonna be too full of ashes by then).

And a million women will march. Ten million. A hundred million. And one white male preacher and his buddy Orrin Hatch will get all the air time. And we will fuss and fume out in the streets, while they preen themselves on TV and pontificate about the Sacred Prick and Its God-Given Right to freely seed the population for wage slaves and cannon fodder.

And the bobble-headed, smiley teeth, hairdo lapdogs who are feigning attention to them worshipfully in the news booth, all day long, will sigh, and bat their eyelashes, and ask them to explain about the Sacred Prick and Its God-Given Rights over and over and over and over...

And Corporate will meanwhile be wrapping Coca Cola signs around Blind Justice, and stringing them all the way to Thomas Jefferson's tomb, and charging us for the privilege of being advertised to, and we will be made to kneel in court, before pleading our right not to pay for the air we breathe and the blood that pumps through our veins, and we will all be made to recite...

"I pledge allegiance to the Bushwhacking of the United States of America, and to the Republican Party for which it stands, one exploitable resource, under God's dollar, quite divisible by income, with liberty and justice for those who can pay for it. Amen."

And then they will invade Iran.

[Iowa]

4. Wow! Peace Patriot, that was an incredible post!

Very moving imagery. These goons are capable of anything - and you have described where we could be heading if they aren't stopped.

Do you write for a living? If not, you could.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Yeah, I've done a bit of writing in my day. Bush and Corporate are

devilishly inspiring topics! I hope they create a whole new generation of wild, raging, sword-wieldling, fire-eating, lightning-eyed, truth-telling, soul-searing scribblers who skewer this lot of criminals, fascists, murderers, thieves and rightwing fart-tanks for dinner. Go, ye young'uns! Go get 'em!

American writing has become too tame, self-involved and academic. Maybe that will be the Bush Cartel's inadvertent gift to us: fire-eating writers!