The Usual Suspects (sans Smiley Dave, Zombiekid and TheGnome) will be over tonight to eat fajitas and watch the debate and there will be livebloggage as I steal their jokes.
I've decided not to drink every time I hear the word Alaska, since the sheer amount of Red Bull in my system alone makes me more susceptible to alcohol poisoning.
Anyway, coverage will start as soon as I can get home from class, though I'm stopping at the store on the way.
I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but sincerely wanting the debate to go like this:
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who honestly thinks "What's another Supreme Court decision you disagree with?" is the political interview equivilent of those SNL Celebrity Jeopardy sketches where the categories have titles like "Black Comedians Named Whoopi"
5 comments:
OMG. She really can't name any Supreme Court decisions besides Roe v Wade? She's never heard of Dred Scott v. Sandford? Plessy v. Ferguson?
The VP doesn't need to be a lawyer, but anyone holding federal office should have a grasp of civil rights history.
Amazingly, too, she thinks that the only issue in Supreme Court cases seems to be federalism.
Um, habeas corpus? Just to name a kind of recent court case McCain was upset with...
Exxon v. Baker comes to mind as I'm pretty sure there was an Amicus Brief in there with her name on it, I mean, given her resume it would be really weird if there weren't. But she might not want to piss off the oil companies.
Though my personal lest favorite Supreme Court decision recently was Hudson v. Michigan, she probably likes it.
I think if I were her, I would have gone with Kelo.
1. The liberals on the court made it.
2. It seems unfair even if you understand it.
3. It seems even more unfair if you don't.
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DeShaney v. Winnebago County. I probably disagree most heartily with that decision.
Poor Joshua!
Given that the sports complex that was her big legacy to Wasilla required the use of eminent domain, I'm not sure she wants to bash Kelo unless she is ready to distinguish it based on public use. The Exxon case is out because Republicans favor capping tort damages.
But yeah, Dred Scott actually is a gimme for someone who has any intellectual grounding in the abortion prohibitionist movement, because it is the case to which they most often compare Roe: a denial of the most basic rights of a particular set of human beings. Then again, if Palin had an intellectual grounding in abortion prohibition, instead of merely an emotional one, she wouldn't put the following three propositions together:
a) Roe was wrong.
b) There is an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution.
c) This is a matter to be resolved by the states.
You can say a + b so long as you believe that fetuses are citizens with a right to life protected by the 14th Amendment that overrides the competing constitutional right to privacy of the pregnant woman -- but then you can't believe c, because states can't decide for themselves that it should be legal to kill these citizens.
You can say a + c, which is the standard Republican federalism view, but then you can't believe b, because then abortion is a Constitutional right and not left to states' discretion.
Biden didn't sound like a con law prof with his muddled reference to "federal jurisdiction" in U.S. v. Morrison (when what he actually meant was that the Court said Congress didn't have the power to make the law), but at least he grasped that the crucial issue in the case was the nexus to interstate commerce. I also think he makes a good point; with Lopez the Court said there had to be a nexus in the Congressional record, he did his best to put that nexus in the record for VAWA, they said "Nope, not good enough."
If she was going to ride the federalism train, she should have gone with Raich and appealed to whoever still believes Palin represents the libertarian streak in Alaska.
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