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This week is a victory for certain ideologies. It shows Constitutional rights and rules of law are so differently interpreted, often with deadly consequences. Within the tragedy of the Virginia Tech Massacre comes a victory for the pro gun lobby, as Bush and his staff have repeatedly stressed that he will vigorously defend the right to bear arms (it is so easy to buy a gun in Virginia, it shocked me when I moved to the DC metro area). Guns are macho, American. Value-laden.
Today, the Supreme Court upheld the Federal Abortion Ban. In a 5-4 opinion authored by Justice Kennedy, the Supreme Court deemed constitutional the so-called Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003. As Adam B notes, Welcome to George Bush's Supreme Court. What a victory for the anti-choice lobby. Adam quotes an architect of the "pro-life" movement's prediction from 2006:
"...Still, if Roberts and Alito help simply to overturn that prior decision on partial-birth abortion, my own judgment is that the regime of Roe will have come to its end, even if Roe itself is not explicitly overruled. What the Court would be saying in effect is, "We are now in business to consider seriously, and to sustain, many plausible measures that impose real restrictions on abortion." Well, that's what happened today.
Please explain how President Bush believes every American has the right to bear arms, but he does not believe in a) upholding the Constitution and respecting the rule of law:
To borrow from the ACLU's great new site Findhabeus.com: George W. Bush has repeatedly violated the Constitution and stripped away the fundamental rights that define our country. Congress and the American people have let it happen...The “Great Writ†of habeas corpus is a fundamental right in the Constitution that protects against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment. Translated from Latin it means “show me the body.†It has historically been an important instrument to safeguard individual freedom against arbitrary executive power...The Founders made the president subject to the rule of law.
Finally, Bush's cadre have defied the rule of law, and what many would call a moral duty to safeguard our children from environmental harm, by harmful energy policy, disgusting encouragement of energy consumption, and generally giving the finger to the reality of climate change. Thomas Friedman's article in Sunday's New York Times was a clarion call for smart, non-ideological thinking about the environment. Here is a link to a re-posted version:
Sorry, but being green, focusing the nation on greater energy efficiency and conservation, is not some girlie-man issue. It is actually the most tough-minded, geostrategic, pro-growth and patriotic thing we can do. Living green is not for sissies. Sticking with oil, and basically saying that a country that can double the speed of microchips every 18 months is somehow incapable of innovating its way to energy independence - that is for sissies, defeatists and people who are ready to see American values eroded at home and abroad.
Living green is not just a "personal virtue," as Mr. Cheney says. It's a national security imperative.
The biggest threat to America and its values today is not communism, authoritarianism or Islamism. Its petrolism. Petrolism is my term for the corrupting, antidemocratic governing practices - in oil states from Russia to Nigeria to Iran - that result from a long run of $60-a-barrel oil. ....
See, I think I'm right: on the right to reproductive choice, to breathe clean air, to go to university and not fear shooting sprees. But, lord knows, there are just as many in this country who think I'm a completely, utterly, wrong, liberal sissy. Including our president.
