Saturday, May 12, 2007

Giuliani only muddied the abortion waters


Charles Krauthammer: Giuliani only muddied the abortion waters
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER36 minutes ago

LEGALIZING ABORTION by judicial fiat (Roe v. Wade) instead of by democratic means has its price. One is that the issue remains socially unsettled. People take to the streets when they have been deprived of resort to legislative action.

The other effect is to render the very debate hopelessly muddled.
Instead of discussing what a decent society owes women and what it owes soon-to-be-born infants, and trying to balance the two by politically hammering out regulations that a broad national consensus can support, we debate the constitutional niceties of a 35-year-old appallingly crafted Supreme Court decision.

Just how tangled the issue gets is illustrated by the current brouhaha over Rudy Giuliani's abortion response in the first Republican presidential debate. Spokesmen for the other candidates have gleefully seized upon what they deem to be Giuliani's gaffe -- not only defying Republican orthodoxy but appearing to want to have it every which way.
On repealing Roe v. Wade:
Giuliani: It would be OK to repeal. It would be also (OK) if a strict constructionist judge viewed it as precedent and I think a judge has to make that decision.
Moderator: Would it be OK if they didn't repeal it?
Giuliani: I think the court has to make that decision and then the country can deal with it. ... states can make their own decisions.
Giuliani's response has been almost universally characterized as a blundering two-way pander. I think not. I've actually heard Giuliani elaborate his position on abortion. His debate answer is an overly concise version of it, which makes it so open to ridicule.
Democrats are pro-choice and have an abortion litmus test for judges they would nominate to the Supreme Court. Giuliani is pro-choice but has no such litmus test. The key phrase in his answer is "strict constructionist judge." On judicial issues in general he believes in "strict constructionism," the common conservative view that we don't want judges citing penumbral emanations and other constitutional vapors to justify inventing new rights they fancy the country needs.
However, one strict constructionist might look at Roe v. Wade as the constitutional travesty it is and decide to repeal it. Another strict constructionist judge could, with equal conviction, decide that after 35 years the habits and mores shaped by Roe v. Wade are so engrained in society that it should not be overturned.

And there is precedent for strict constructionists accepting even bad constitutional rulings after the passage of time. The most famous recent example is Chief Justice William Rehnquist for years opposing the original 1966 Miranda ruling as "legislating from the bench," but upholding it in 2000 on the grounds that it had become so engrained in American life that its precedental authority trumped its bastard constitutional origins. (He used different words.) In a country with a rational debate about abortion, Giuliani would simply have been asked how he would regulate (up to and including banning) abortion. That's not a relevant question here because neither presidents nor legislatures nor referendums decide this. Judges do. All presidents do is appoint judges.
Giuliani's answer on how to go about picking such judges is perfectly reasonable. It appears to be a dodge about the abortion issue itself simply because -- thanks to Roe -- every such debate becomes tangled with otherwise irrelevant issues of constitutional doctrine and stare decisis.
To give you an idea of how muddied the abortion debate has become thanks to this gratuitous constitutional overlay, consider the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the ban on partial-birth abortion. It has been misread by partisans on both sides. Pro-choice advocates denounced it as the beginning of a gradual cutting back on abortion rights. Pro-lifers celebrated it for precisely that reason.

It is nothing of the kind. The only reason the court upheld the ban is because an alternative (far more commonly used, in fact) to this mid-to-late-term procedure is readily available. Hence no "undue burden" on the woman. Hence it respects the confines of existing abortion jurisprudence. Roe (and its successors) lives.
I hope for the day when Roe is overturned, not because I want to see abortion criminalized -- I once voted in a Maryland referendum to keep abortion legal if Roe is ever repealed -- but to sweep away this ridiculous muddle. Perhaps Giuliani should have said something like that rather than leaving the precedent question up to judges. Abortion is already so contaminated with legalisms, why not turn the issue into one of simple democracy? Let the people decide. Let them work it out the way everything else in this country is worked out -- by political argument and legislative accommodation.

Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for The Washington Post.

Time's Nancy Gibbs on Romney's Faith

Saturday, May 12, 2007
Time's Nancy Gibbs on Romney's Faith
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 9:54 AM
Here's the beginning of our conversation yesterday:
HH: Now I want to start by letting people know, you’ve been writing for Time Magazine how many years?
NG: It’ll be 22 years this fall.
HH: So you’ve seen a lot of presidential candidates come and go.
NG: I have.
HH: Have you ever seen a conversation about a candidate’s religious faith as intense as the one surrounding Mitt Romney?
NG: I have not, and the closest thing, and it wasn’t even, I don’t think it even came anywhere close to this, was when Al Gore nominated Joe Lieberman as his running mate. And yet, I don’t think even that conversation approached this one. You really do, as many people have pointed out, you have to go back to 1960 to have anything like this kind of conversation. That’s really the reference point.
HH: When I was writing A Mormon In The White House?, I reviewed the famous The Making Of The President 1960 book, as well, ’64 and ’68, when Mitt Romney’s dad was involved in national politics. There was nothing like the intensity, either, or…I lack the word for it, brass knuckled, perhaps, Nancy Gibbs. What was your impression of the people eager to attack the Mormon faith? Were they overly aggressive? Or was it just par for the course these days?
NG: Well, you know, what I wonder when you talk about his father’s run, especially in 1968, is whether what happened in 1960, the fact that the country had an intense discussion about the relevance of Kennedy’s Catholicism, and essentially concluded that the substance of private religious faith is really not relevant to the discussion of qualification for public office. I wonder whether the residue of that conversation was still fresh in people’s minds when Mitt Romney’s father was running, and it has somehow faded, and so now we are, all these years later, having the conversation again, and much more intensely.
Read the whole thing. We have to hope that gradually the MSM will get to where Gibbs already is: Aware that the attacks on Romney's faith are unprecedented and unsavory. Gibbs notes that those in 1960 who were opposed to Kennedy were divided by Theodore White into the ignorant and the bigoted, and that Romney faces the same two camps today. I added that today there is a third group, or actually a respectable division among the bigoted, and that some of those have access to MSM. That's what makes Romney's challenge more difficult. When Jacob Weisberg and Al Sharpton are attacking a religion, the bigotry Romney confronts seems at the same time more respectable and more loathsome, more subtle and much more crude, but it is certainly a more powerful presence in the MSM than it was in JFK's day.

Prosperity Quest, Presented by C. Rick Koerber

15 May 2007, Tuesday
Prosperity Quest - Register Now Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 from 07:00 - 10:00 pm.Provo Marriott101 West 100 NorthProvo, UT 84601Admission: Free but must register to attend.
Presented by C. Rick Koerber, the Prosperity Quest event is the lunching of a new program to spread prosperity to as many people as possible. The May 15th seminar is an opportunity to receive updates and new announcements regarding FranklinSquires Real Estate Institute, American Founders University, Garrett Gunderson’s “Freedom FastTrack,” Free Capitalist Radio and the Producer Revolution™. This free event is “the next step” for individuals wanting to learn more about the above organizations and for individuals wanting to become more involved in applying the teachings of C. Rick Koerber and the late Les McGuire. Long-time associate of the Producer Revolution™ are strongly encouraged to attend.
Register Now

Romney's Estimated Wealth In Millions


Romney's Estimated Wealth In Millions
Between $190 -- $250 Million
May 12 - Republican Mitt Romney is expected to report financial assets between $190 million and $250 million, an amount that would likely make him the wealthiest of the 2008 presidential candidates.

Aides to the former Massachusetts governor said his assets have been held in a blind trust that he and his wife set up when he took office in 2002. The adviser who provided the estimate of his assets cautioned that the number is based on 2005 and 2006 financial activity and could amount to a bigger total once the disclosure report is filed later this year.
The adviser spoke on condition of anonymity because the totals have not been officially released. The deadline for filing financial disclosures is Tuesday but Romney on Friday obtained an extension.

Romney lent his campaign $2 million this year and could clearly tap his wealth again if necessary. Romney is not the wealthiest candidate ever to run for president.

Mitt Romney: Brainy Wonk or Brazen Waffler?


Mitt Romney: Brainy Wonk or Brazen Waffler?
This post was written by RB Scott on 12 May, 2007 (09:34) All News
By RB Scott, Boston, Massachusetts
May 12, 2007



Is there anything we don’t know about Willard Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who would be President?


He has confessed that most follicles in his 60-year-old scalp still produce thick black hair, making every tottering windbag in the land all the more envious. It was enough to learn His Hunkiness is a testimony only to clean living and regular exercise not to some gossipy plastic surgeon or bottle-tanned personal trainer.


Although Mitt has been openly campaigning for the Presidency for more than a year now - officially since January - the only thing we may know for certain is that he looks real good up close and personal and that he may have changed his mind on the key issues of the day about as often as his great-great grandfather and mine added new wives.


Ann Davies Romney, Mitt’s only wife for nearly 40 years and his high school sweetheart, may be the best kept secret of all. She was unknown to the rest of the world until she joined her husband for an interview with CNN’s Larry King. Still extraordinarily good looking despite having borne and raised five sons and battling multiple sclerosis for several years, Mrs. Romney’s spontaneous, direct but kind and literate comments instantly belied those persistently pernicious “blonde” jokes, not to mention the overworked caricatures of subservient “Molly Mormon” women.


Read the full story ...http://www.bloggernews.net/16708


Captain Mark Towner

Rick Koerber talks about what is a FreeCapitalist?


What is the FreeCapitalist Project?
At the most basic level, the FreeCapitalist Project is a network of local FreeCapitalist Forums that meet regularly to learn, network, and plan positive social changes in the surrounding community. Members are united by a shared commitment to freedom and liberty through the unique and divinely inspired document: the United States Constitution.

Why did the FreeCapitalist Project start?
The republic of the United States has suffered from consistent efforts to alter, subvert, or disregard the Constitution framework set up by the Founding Fathers. Ironically, the ultimate threat to the order ushered in by the work of the Founding Fathers is almost invisible to the average citizens. The FreeCapitalist Project was started to help learn about the Constitution to advocate change within families and communities.

What is the mission of the FreeCapitalist Project?
The general mission of the FreeCapitalist Project is to help teach the Principles of Prosperity and restore governing standards of public and private activity.

What political party is the FreeCapitalist Project affiliated with?
The FreeCapitalist Project is not affiliated with any political party. However, the FreeCapitalist Project is interested in helping any organization founded and committed to the advancement of these Principles of Prosperity.

Why are members of the FreeCapitalist Project called Free Capitalists?
The FreeCapitalist Project uses the term Free Capitalists to set apart those who are committed to our principle-based approach to living and contributing in a free society.


Captain Mark